Mega Disk

I’m very sure this is a rare item and I’m happy that I still have it; even if it’s been made obsolete by emulators and flash carts. If it wasn’t for this disk drive I would have missed out on some very good games back in the day. When I bought this unit I got it with about 100 games on 3.25″ diskette. It’s really hard to remember but I think I paid about $100 for the Mega Disk with the 100 games. It was a very exciting day and it’s why I was able to discover games like Warsong, Lightening Force and Snow Bros. I tested it just today and it’s still working very well.

Mega Disk is an after market (and unlicensed) 3.25″ floppy drive that attaches to your Sega Genesis and will load ROMs from diskette to your Genesis. The load time is longer than a cartridge but once the game was loaded the gameplay was identical to authentic carts.

Mega Disk, memory save cartridge and games on 3.25″ diskette.

Mega Disk with memory cart and game disk inserted.

Mega Disk booting from diskette and loading ROM.

Mega Disk finished loading and running Snow Bros.

Mega Disk instructions.

Although my rules for collecting have changed over the years my current number one rule is that any Sega Master System, Sega Genesis or Sega Mega Drive game I add to my collection must be complete and in very good condition.

Just a little further down now to see the strength of my conviction:

Here’s Warsong (Langrisser in Japan), no case, no manual and almost no label.

I had this game back in the day and I loved it. It sells for too much money on ebay. So when I found it in the wild at a local Video Game Shop for $5 I could not resist. Even though I’ll likely not display this in the collection I will play it. And maybe someday I’ll find a reasonably priced complete copy for the collection.

Too often I’ve been a little disappointed after receiving an ebay purchase only to realize after close inspection that the game’s condition was less than I expected despite reasonable pictures being provided. So if I have to pay $10-$20+ for a game it needs to be complete and in great shape.

I never actually owned the cart for Warsong. I had it on a 3.5″ floppy disk that played off a really unique disk drive unit that sat on top of the Genesis. It was called Mega Disk and if it wasn’t for this bootleg device I would have never discovered this gem of a game.
For anyone who remembers this game; I played it so much that I could win the first stage and keep the King alive. This was a NPC that was suppose to die and was a major plot point to the story. I knew how much combat the King NPC could handle and how much I had to clean up with my own troops. It felt like a really big achievement back in the day! Doing this was not a problem for the software. The game would carry on as if the King had been killed regardless of the actual outcome.