Be Excellent To Each Other

I was in PC World, quite without reason, earlier today and saw a whole pile of the Blaze/ATGames Mega Drives at the counter for £19.97. On a whim, I decided to buy one.

The package is small and neat, measuring just about the width of an A4 piece of paper, a good thee inches less than the same's length and about three inches deep, all done out in classic Mega Drive black and silver with Sonic and Knuckles on the front.

Inside is a plastic, bubble mould, tray containing the dinky little console, two joypads, the A/V cable and a power adaptor. Shoved underneath the tray was a folded A3 sheet with instructions in various languages and inside that an A5 page with the same (I assume) in Spanish.



The console itself is extraordinarily dinky - it's about the same size as an XBox 360 game pad but slightly taller thanks to having a domed top. The font of the unit features two standard 9-Pin Mega Drive controller ports, the top an On/Off button, a "Menu" button, the ATGames logo in green, the trapdoor cartridge slot and a naff "Sege Mega Drive" sticker. The back of the unit features two RCA ports -audio and video - a slide switch for PAL or NTSC operation and the DC 9V in. The sides of the unit have weird rubberised translucent panels and the bottom nothing but four rubber feet. All-in-all it, except for the naff sticker, feels fairly well made.



Connect and fire the thing up and you are presented with an easily navigated menu allowing you to choose any of the 15 built-in games to play. In no particular order, these are: Alien Storm, Columns, Golden Axe, Altered Beast , Crack Down, Fatal Labyrinth, Gain Ground, Sonic & Knuckles, Flicky, Alex Kidd, Bonanza Bros, Decap Attack, Arrow Flash, ESWAT and Shadow Dancer. Not a bad selection. Except for Altered Beast . I tried most of them and they seemed to play just as I remembered them.

Graphically I thought system replicated the original extremely well. I didn't notice many graphical glitches and when you connect an old video console to a big LCD TV the picture can become a bit distorted anyway. Audio was a slightly different matter, however. Firstly I wish ATGames had included an A/V output as on the original Mega Drive - way back when I built my own SCART cable with both left and right stereo audio channels that I fed into my Hi-Fi, sadly that's no longer a possibility. That aside, I noticed that the sound output isn't quite authentic. For instance the music in Golden Axe seemed to be the wrong pitch and in Sonic and Knuckles much slower than the original. Worse, when playing Columns I had the distinct feeling that it was only out-putting the left channel, but that may be because I had to wire the outputs through a RCA to SCART adaptor given my TV doesn't support old school S-Video.

The controllers need special mention. As far as I can tell these are like-for-like clones of the original Japanese 6-button Mega Drive controllers, featuring the same build quality, responsiveness and compatibility. Certainly, I tried one with my USB adapter and Kega Fusion didn't kick up a fuss and it felt just as good as an original Sega pad.

The whole point behind the cartridge slot and PAL/NTSC switch is that you're supposed to be able to play original Mega Drive cartridges, of any region, on the system. I don't have any original NTSC cartridges, but I tried three PAL cartridges I do have - Altered Beast , Streets of Rage and Super Monaco GP and all seemed to work OK, although I didn't play any of them all the way through. I have heard that it's a hit and miss affair depending on the game, its condition and how accurately the ATGames/Blaze system emulates the Mega Drive hardware. A good example of this is Super Fighter Team's recently released Mega Drive title Beggar Prince, which wouldn't work at all. It's also worth noting that the system is incompatible with the Mega-CD, 32x, Base Converter and titles using the Sega Virtua Processor chip.

All of this made me wonder how this thing works. You can get a good look at the circuitry simply by opening the cartridge doors and peering in, but if you're feeling braver you can peel back the rubber feet on the bottom of the unit concealing the screws, unscrew them and gently prise the system apart (which sounds completely fetishistic on second read-through). Inside, the system is remarkably neat and compact, featuring two boards: one for the controller ports and the other for the main system. When I see a system this neat and compact on the insides, especially when compared to the original Mega Drive hardware, I think System on a Chip. When I think System on a Chip, I immediately think ARM. Looking at the board it's difficult to tell what's actually in use given that the major components aren't labelled on the PCB and they're obscured by black splodges. About the only component I could reliable recognise was the timing crystal, which is apparently driving the system at 27MHz. However, if I were a betting man I'd wager the pin-outs point towards an ARMv4 device which would put it orders of magnitude more powerful than the device it emulates.



There are rumours that ATGames are going to release a development cartridge for something they call the "Firecore" system. A quick Google shows that the Firecore is a slightly modified version of this system which includes a few more games, a power LED and what appears to be translucent plastic cover on the front presumably hiding an IR port of some description. Whether the development cartridge will ever see the light of day and if it will be compatible with this version remains to be seen, but it could make for an interesting retro inspired project.

Overall I think this is a great little novelty system. The emulation isn't perfect and I've yet to find a definitive list of compatible original games, but the supplied games, except for one, are pretty good - and probably cheaper than buying them from eBay or Live Arcade/PSN/Wii Ware - even if it can't play more than the handful of original cartridges that I have. Personally I thought it was worth the asking price for the joypads alone.

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Oh, good stuff EOAE!

Regarding the chip-under-a-blob thing, it's a common technique for mass produced toy electronics to use a cheaper un-encapsulated package which is then sealed with the blob once it's been soldered in place on the PCB.

Read descriptions of the C64 "DTV" joystick game thing for more about that if you're interested.

It won't necessarily have an Arm processor by the way - it may be a "faithful" implementation of the original processor (68000?) and custom chipset of the Megadrive, done on an Asic.

This may work out cheaper than a software emulation, which would indeed require a relatively powerful 32 bit ARM core.

Any chance of a few pics?

Piccies and a bit more info added. Also tidied up some of the glaring grammatical errors, typos etc (although 300 more probably remain ).

With only one phono for audio, it's definitely outputting mono sound. Whether it's mixing L+R or just L isn't obvious. Maybe it'd be possible to solder on a second.

The audio thing: PAL/NTSC differences?

Interesting. Makes more sense than my theory, anyway



I wondered if it might be some custom chip, but it seems an expensive route to go down for a cheap as chips product, whereas software is generally cheaper (especially at Chinese rates of pay). The internet is of course no help here Wikipedia claims that it is ARM based, but doesn't cite any references. Random internet people claim it's an ARM Titan (I wasn't aware of any such specification) and Googling for "ATGames ARM" brings up this thread in the top 3 results!



I only really noticed the L/R thing in Columns. Sorting the gems and dropping them on the left-hand side of the board made the expected noises, but on the right it didn't. The PAL/NTSC switch doesn't seem to make any difference to the built-in games that I could detect and I haven't tried any original carts in NTSC mode. I may try that.

There are a number of Sega games which have different graphics / titles / soundfx depending on what region it thinks your machine is , although i'd have expected two switches - one for PAL/NTSC and one for JAP/US

It's quite possible that most MD games were designed with mono in mind; think back 20 years and most people (ie kids) were playing on 12/14" portables with a single crappy speaker.

Ain't that the truth! When I first got mine it was hooked up to a crappy 10(?)" black and white TV, which I occasionally (actually, fairly often since they were away a lot of the time) could take downstairs and hook up to my folks 24" colour set. However, I also had a no-brand colour 14" monitor which my dad bought me from Watford Electronics a few years previously for the BBC B. This is what prompted me to make a SCART cable for the Megadrive - I remember writing to Sega to get the specifics of the A/V out on the Mega Drive and was surprised when they responded and included a photocopy of a memo that said something along the lines of "Here are the details for the A/V port for those who want to connect their Mega Drive to the kitchen sink".

Anyway, remembering all that I was inspired to go into the loft (the only place wifey won't go looking for my stuff to throw out) for my Mega Drive. Sure enough, my handmade SCART cable was in there but not as I remember it.



I was sure I'd splice in a couple of RCA cables to handle the stereo, but clearly not. I then remembered that I'd bought a couple of crappy yellow speakers from Maplin for £5 which I plugged into the Mega Drive's headphone socket and ran the audio through that. It was only when I got the Mega-CD that I patched the audio through RCA to the Hi-Fi.

I just tried my homebrew cable and it works! Except for a nasty farting sound on the audio - which I remember happening back then. I'd assumed back then it was something to do with the hardware causing interference, which was why I bought those crappy speakers from Maplin. However, I just took the thing apart and it looks to me now like I botched the job!



I can't/don't remember why, but I've not only connected RGB but also the video-in signal (although I suspect it syncs the video). Also, I've fed both audio channels to L but also cross joined then to R (this may have been because the monitor in question only had one speaker).

Incidentally that gossamer looking stuff at the bottom of the picture is decaying sellotape (quality job!) and the white crusty stuff on the cable above is polystyrene from the original MD box.

Ahh, golden days