While in Wisconsin, I stepped outside to use the Internet. Yeah, that sentence seemed a bit strange when I wrote it. It’s sort of like the front door was a time warp and it was 1989 inside and 2010 outside. Whatever, the point is I managed to download a Sega Genesis CD 32X emulator for the Mac called “Kega”, which actually works pretty well. Since I didn’t have my Sega CD 32X with me on this trip it was imperative that I found another way to enjoy the copy of MegaRace I picked up at the Mall of America.

Upon getting everything to work by finally saying fuck the directions and just putting the BIOS files on the desktop instead of in the application support folder; I was a bit miffed by the quality of the SCD port of MegaRace. As you know (I hope you do if you’re reading this), The Sega Genesis can only display 64 colors simultaneously. The Genesis with the Sega CD attachment could display… 64 colors. That’s right, besides adding greater capacity for game storage and some scaling capabilities the Sega CD does almost nothing to boost the old Genesis’ features. That is bordering on retarded when you’re talking about using live-action video and pre-rendered computer-animation in a game. MegaRace had a still slim palette of 256 colors on the PC, which -though ridiculous today- was still way more than the Sega fucking CD had! This game never really belonged on the system.

 

I’ll go into more detail about what’s wrong with this version in my next entry, but suffice it to say; I was a bit disappointed when I started playing the game. Then I remembered I still had my old PC copy kicking around my office. Upon my return from the north a feverish search began for my PC version of MegaRace. Not only did I find it, I found it with the original manual completely intact. I don’t think I can hook my old Thrust Master joystick up to my Mac Pro, but that would make it perfect! Please don’t ask me where the box is. Almost all of my boxes were thrown away when I moved east in 1999. It was not my decision…

The only problem that remained was the fact that this was a DOS era game and I’m on a Mac, which famously works with hardly any games. But one quick search online and suddenly I was playing the 1994 classic on a quad-core machine with six gigs of RAM and a 24” monitor using Boxer. Boxer is a DOS emulator for OSX based on the DOS Box emulator for Windows. Seldom have I felt such glee.

Thanks to this crap version of an otherwise great game, I’ve been reminded of what an avid PC gamer I was in 1992 through 1998 and have taken a look at my old DOS and Windows collection that I never thought I’d play again. I think some of these are a pretty good place to start on my quest to beat them all… or at least most of them. The first game on my quest shall be… MegaRace!

Though I’ve never beaten this game, I have played the shit out of it. I’m going to give it like 3 weeks before (in the interest of brevity), I say screw it and move on to the next game in my collection. This is the beginning!

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