In this post I am taking a closer look at the green “Gen Top 100 SMS Top 100” multi cartridge that, as the title suggests, contain 100 games for Genesis / Mega Drive and 100 games for the Master System. My experiences are written based on running the cartridge on my PAL Mega Drive 1 connected to a CRT TV.
First impressions
The label on the green cartridge reads:
“No battery save forever” – which essentially means the cartridge is using a chip rather than a CR2032 battery or similar to save the games.
“According to the ranking of games on the internet” – I have no idea what ranking they used when selecting games for this cartridge.
“Once upon a time, these games had a lot of scenery.” – No comment 🙂
The included games for both systems can be seen in the images below.
As seen, there is a decent mix of good titles here, including some classics and “must have” games such as the Sonic series. Games marked with an “Y” supports saving, and I will test the save feature further down in this post.
Genesis / Mega Drive Green Multicart: games
Upon booting up the cartridge in my PAL Mega Drive, I am greeted by the menu below, together with some annoying music. The menu system works rather well, and by pressing left and right on the D-pad you are presented with the next page of games. Pressing “C” will allow you to choose between the Mega Drive+Genesis / Master System game lists. Pressing B will bring up some notes about the selected game.
As seen below, I started up Sonic 3, and it runs just fine on my unit. I was a bit worried about the runspeed compability of PAL games, but it seems to be adapted quite well. For example, the music in Sonic 1 runs just as slowly as it does on the original PAL cartridge.
Although I have not tried all of the games on the cartridge, the ones I tried to start did boot up just fine, below are some examples of that. During the tests I had to look up some issues with the games, such as distorted voice samples in Street Fighter 2 and crappy sound in the Sega Master System version of Outrun. These issues seem to stem from problems with the original games rather than the Chinese manufacturers of this multicartridge.
The Master System games library works fine as well. One annoying thing is that when you press “reset” on the Mega Drive while in a Master System game, the system will reboot to the start screen of that particular game and not to the menu of the cartridge.
Multicart save feature
A dealbreaker for a multi cartridge is the save feature. For example, I reviewed a GBA multicart a while ago that did not saved games, which sadly made it quite uninteresting. To make sure a cartridge support saving for several games, I perform the following test sequence on it:
- Create a save for game 1.
- Create a save for game 2.
- Make sure the saves in step 1 and 2 above work as intended.
On this cartridge, I created a save game in Sonic 3 and a character in Shining Force 2. Both these saves worked as intended.
Since the cartridge also includes Master System games I also created a save game in Phantasy Star, and then made sure all the saves for both systems were still intact, and they were!
To sum up this test / review, the Genesis / Mega Drive Top 100 multi cartridge does exactly what it is supposed to do:
- Includes 100 Genesis / Mega Drive games and 100 Master System games.
- Works on my PAL Mega Drive 1.
- Supports save games for both Genesis+Mega Drive and Master System.
The only flaws I have found are minor ones, such as:
- Annoying music in the menus.
- When resetting Master System games, you don’t come back to the cartridge menu.
Other than that, I guess it just comes down to the games included if this multicart is worth buying. I think the games selection is just fine, with several classic titles.