Good Morning guys, today I will give a quick installation for a Genesis/Mega Drive emulators in the Android phone; The GenPlusDroid.  There are many emulator for Sega Genesis in Googleplay but I had to cover one which is easy to set and play. Although GenPlusDroid had some advertisement, it didn't hinder the gameplay so I think it's still viable to review and to make a fast guide for.

                                                                        Two Logos?

“Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia”

By the way either Mega Drive or Genesis is the same console with the differences being the Sega Genesis is known in the US; while the rest of the world uses Sega Mega Drive as the name. To make it easier, we will call it Sega Genesis from now on.

Sega Genesis with 6 button layout

   

     

                                        Original Mega Drive console with three button layout

(I used to had a Genesis unit with three button layout too)

                                              

(Pictures are courtesy of Wikipedia)

  

Sega Genesis is one of the Sega main console during late 80’s to the middle of 90’s, which had become strong competitor for Nintendo with their Super Nintendo). Also known as Mega Drive in Japan and the rest of the world, Genesis had a well-known mascot in form of a blue hedgehog named Sonic, who could give Mario a run for his money in term of coolness(he is definitely faster after all XD). Although the majority of the games were two-dimensional plat former or action games, Sega did manage to have cult followers until this day thanks to their Genesis era. Being the coin-op arcade video games developer also help to gain mass recognition, through their arcades to console conversion titles like Afterburner, Space harrier, Outrunner, Altered beast, Golden Axe, and etcetera. Not to mention colorful plat former titles like Ristar and the titular Sonic the hedgehog series made them very well known as one of the main video game console makers during the nineties.

Before we started with the installation, I will give the phone specification that I use to make this guide.

Currently, my phone is Realme3 with android version10 running an Octa-core processor and 3 Gb ram. Since Sega Genesis was one of the earlier videogames during 90’s it will not need a very fast Phone to emulate. In reality, a 1 GB RAM phone is enough to get the Genesis emulator works at full speed. How about for a very old android device?

Here is what I quoted directly from the https://www.androidauthority.com “Moving to the Sega Genesis (or Sega Mega Drive for those outside the US), MD.emu is one of the more popular Genesis emulators for Android and its team has successfully tested the emulator on older phones such as the Motorola Droid, Xperia Play, and Galaxy S2. The almost ten-year-old Droid only offered 256MB of RAM and a single-core Cortex-A8 chipset at launch”

For the bare minimum specification, you can use a phone with 256 MB of RAM and a single-core Cortex-A8 chipset are enough to play the genesis emulator

GenPlusDroid LOGO

OK let’s start the GenPlusDroid installation

1.       Go to Google playstore and type GenPlusDroid (or you can type Sega genesis emulator and find it from many of the genesis emulators)

2.       Install the application GenPlusDroid and wait until the phone finished the installation

3.       Connect one end of a Usb cable to the phone charger while the other end goes  to the laptop’s or PC’s USB ports and wait until both the PC and the phone connected

4.       Go inside the folder GensPlusDroid in the Phone storage and put the Genesis ROMS inside the ROM folder (You can also download the ROM via any video game ROMS site and put the downloaded  ROM inside the same folder)

5.       After  finishing the file copy, you can open the emulator by tapping on the GenPlusDroid Icon

6.       This is the application looks after u start it (March 2021, may change due later update)

 

Here is the info for each menu

 

  

1   Choosing the ROM that u want to play

2   Checking the ROM that you have played before

3   Using cheat feature

4   If you close a game using return main feature, you can use resume to continue your last game

5   Setting the emulator graphic, sound, input, transparency, etc

6   Release note, emulator version, developer info and email

 

  

This is how the default button layout of GenPlusDroid Looks like

1.Directional Buttons (Touchscreen)

2.Mode and Start Button (Touchscreen)

3. Action Buttons A, B, C, X, Y, Z (Touchscreen)

4.  2X speed button (buggy)

Now, If you push the back button (◀️) on your phone, you will see the emulator's  Setting

Load State Start the game the point that you save from Save State

Load ROM. Chose the game ROM or change the game you currently play if you pick another.

Setting. It opens the setting adjustments (read below for more coverage)

Select State. You can choose at which slot number you want to save state the game

Save State. You can push the save state if you wish to continue the game from the point you need to restart later.

Cheats. Applying Cheat that you can find from the net

Reset Game. Instantly restart the game

Select shader choose one downloaded shaders to sharpen the graphic

Reset shader turn off the shader that you put on the game

Return Main instantly close the ROM and send you to the main screen of the emulator

Lets check on what is inside the Setting button shall we ;)

GenPlusDroid Setting figure 1; Setting,emulation.audio

1. If you tick it, the touch screen gamepads will be six action buttons instead of three

2. Setting the frame-skip. 0 made the game moves the most fluently; hence the best choice

3. Game genie is like a cheat feature; I haven't test it yet

4. Automatically start the Game from the last point you close the app 

5. If you tick this, there will be a 2x speed button in the main screen, which is still buggy so leave it blank

6. If you tick this, there will be a rewind button, which made the game goes backward. While it's not buggy, I don't think you may need this feature

7. Unless you want no sound in the emulator, leave this on

8. Sample Rate. The higher the number, the better the sound quality

9. Affecting the sound stretching in the game sound

GenPlusDroid's setting Figure 2, Graphic and Input setting

1. Pick one of the display orientations. Either portrait (smaller screen with the button layout didn't mingle with the screen/just appear below the displayed game screen) or Landscape (bigger screen but the buttons will be present onscreen).