As the sands of time rush faster and faster through the hourglass I have, like so many before me, begun to take solace in the trinkets and obsessions of my youth. Whereas a man of my father’s generation might have turned to model trains or the cars they dreamt of as a boy, I have hooked up my Genesis.
I mentioned before that I traded away most of my games over the years in order to keep up with the latest stuff. I still had a number of boxes in the garage full of consoles, cables and who knows what else though. My first job was to get it all out and see what I had.
As it turns out I had almost all my old consoles. I also managed to hang on to some of my favorite games going all the way back to the Sega Master System. The Genesis was a huge part of my childhood and so I started looking into what I needed to get it hooked up to a modern HD television.
The first thing I tried was an inexpensive device from LevelHike that went straight from the Genesis to HDMI. It was easy to set up and worked, but the picture was very disappointing. The best way I can describe it is to say it looked like melted Perler Beads.
I know someone reading this has a Genesis and a 32x hooked up to a modern television and I’d love to hear what your using.
— Gabe (@cwgabriel) February 13, 2022
I asked for some advice on Twitter and was told over and over again that I needed to use HD Retrovision cables and something called a Retrotink 5x. This is a $300 device, but so many people were recommending it that I decided to give it a try. Also I used the company card so technically Jerry paid for half. Shhhh.
The Retrotink 5k is a little black box that you can hook any of your old consoles up to via Composite, S-Video, Component, or a SCART connector. The box itself houses some sort of top secret algorithm that takes the video from your console and applies all sorts of effects that make the resulting HDMI signal look just like it did on an ancient television.
That’s good because games used to be designed in such a way that they took advantage of the flaws inherent in these old sets. 16 bit games relied on what was essentially old school anti aliasing to sort of fuzzy up the sprites. When viewed in high def on a modern 4K tv these games don’t look as good as we remember and it’s not some trick of retrospect it’s true! They really did look better back then!
What the retrotink 5k does is make your games look like they should and when you see it work it feels like magic. They recommend just plugging it in and playing which is what I did and loved my experience. For the hardcore you can use the menu to access all of the individual settings from the scanline polyphase percentage to the mode of your pixel deinterlacer. I don’t know what any of that means so I didn’t mess with it but you can!
HD Retrovision was kind enough to send me their Genesis component cables as well as a set for the Super Nintendo. Again the folks on my Twitter did not steer me wrong. These are ridiculously high quality cables and when combined with the Retrotink 5x the results are awesome. They also make an adapter that will allow the Genesis cable to work with the Saturn so I picked that up as well and again it looks great. The situation I have now is that there is only one Retrotink 5x and a bunch of old consoles. Once again Twitter stepped up and told me about a much beloved device called the gcomp. This is a massive component switcher that looks like it is exactly what I’m looking for. This is on my list of things to get as I continue to tinker with this setup.
Also on that list of cool stuff recommended by Twitter were Retro-bit wireless controllers for my old systems. I haven’t tried these yet but again they came very highly recommended.
Speaking of Retro-bit, I am using their Prism HDMI adapter for my Gamecube. Originally I made the mistake of getting the inexpensive HDMI adapter from a company called Pound Technology. I had purchased a few of these cables for my various consoles at the same time so the realization that they were not very good really sucked. Component cables for the GameCube cost around $300 so I was looking for an alternative. The Prism adapter is great because it uses the digital AV out on your GameCube unlike the less expensive adapters I had tried. I'm super happy with the picture and would recommend it for someone else in the same boat.
In general the price of these old games has gone up dramatically recently. There have been concerted efforts to artificially inflate the price of retro games by “grading” companies. We’ve also seen digital stores close down making some people like myself curious about what they actually own. I’m not interested in these games as financial assets. I love everything about these old games from the artwork on the covers to the manual designs and the game itself. I admire the curves on my Genesis the same way my father admired a passing 57’ Chevrolet. These consoles are responsible for so many of my best core memories that it’s no surprise just having them around is a comfort. I’m lucky that I was a Sega kid for the most part because the prices on Genesis games are still pretty reasonable. I have some holes in my collection that I’d love to fill out and it’s going to be much cheaper than if I was hunting for SNES carts.
As for getting your hands on this old stuff I’ve been hitting my local used game store. Ebay is always an option but the prices at both of those places can get high simply because they know they are dealing with collectors. I’ve honestly had incredible luck with the Nextdoor app. I know that hitting garage sales is another classic move but that requires a level of outdoor activity that quite frankly I am uncomfortable with.
I bought some cheap plastic stands off Amazon and It’s been a lot of fun turning my office here into a little museum. It’s silly how much I enjoy just being surrounded by this stuff. I much prefer having it in here on display rather than stuck in boxes out in the garage. Plus Kara and I are pretty much unstoppable at Mario Kart Double Dash. We challenged the boys to a match but they watched us play one track and were so in awe of our ancient techniques that they refused to play. They also thought we were crazy because we kept shouting “BLUE SPAAAAAAARKS” and high fiving.
I'll keep you posted as my retro game journey continues. I recently discovered that some developers are still making games for the "Mega Drive" and I made a few strategic purchases to see what a Genesis game feels like with a modern twist. I'll let you know once I get those but in the meantime if you have any questions about my current setup just ask me on Twitter.
-Gabe Out
