These are the best SEGA Mega Drive (and other consoles) emulators available. Each one is slightly different in what they offer but they will all get you playing your favourite classic games well.

For the best Mega Drive/Genesis experience on a PC I recommend the officially licensed USB controllers manufactured by RetroBit which can be easily found online. The Saturn version is also ideal.

Alternatives are SEGA's own USB controllers; the standard model and those created for the PS3. Also, the Microsoft Sidewinder control pads have the same number of buttons and are quality pads. All these are becoming rare so Ebay is a good place to look.

Retrobit Mega Drive/Gensis USB Controller (Black)	Retrobit Saturn USB Controller (Slate)	SEGA Saturn USB Controller	Microsoft Sidewinder Game Pad	Microsoft Sidewinder Game Pad Pro

These all plug and play with modern versions of Windows.

To download the emulators, right click the links and select Save Target As... to save the file to your hard drive. All files are zipped so you will need to extract them.

Be sure to have the latest version of DirectX installed on your system. You can get it from here http://www.microsoft.com/directx.

Any homepages for the emulators are included if they are still online.

KEGA Fusion 3.64

Requires Windows (Not NT) and DirectX 7 and above.

Fusion is a Mega Drive/Mega CD/32X, Master System, Game Gear and Pico emulator for Windows written by a god of SEGA Programming Steve Snake. It is the only emulator that supports the Mega CD32X combined for games such as Night Trap 32X.

It sports high accuracy, high speed and plenty of other options like Virtua Racing, Menacer, Pro Action Replay support and the fantastic Netplay allowing you to play 2-Player games over the net and video recording.

For full speed on all emulation modes you will want a processor running at 800Mhz.

Fusion is excellent since it does not require the dreaded ASPI layer. I have used all previous versions of the emulator (Lazerous) for many years on numerous versions of Windows with no problems.

More info is in the programs read me file. There is also a version available for Apple Mac.

Homepage: http://www.eidolons-inn.net/tiki-index.php?page=Kega

Download

Gens 2.14

Requires Windows (Not NT), DirectX 7 and above and ASPI

Gens is a Mega Drive/Mega CD and 32X emulator for Windows Written by Stephane Dallongeville. It sports loads of useful features in addition to the emulation like debugging and screenshot grab (used for much of this website) and Netplay.

For full speed on all emulation modes you will want a processor running at least 800Mhz.

To play all emulation modes at full speed a processor running at 1GHz will be enough. More info is in the programs read me file.

For playing Mega CD games this emulator requires the ASPI layer. See below.

There is also a port of this emulator for several Linux distributions. It currently has the version 2.15.2. It can be found easily via a Google search.

Homepage: http://www.gens.me/

Download

Gens32 Surreal v1.86 HD

This emu is based on Gens. This is very similar to Gens and has a few tweaks such as turbo games and macros for quick button combinations. It can be set to appear in a simple mode or an advanced user mode. Useful for those not familiar with emulation.

Homepage: http://gens32.emubase.de/

Download

Kgen 0.04b

This is one of the first emulators. It runs in DOS and is best used with a VESA2.0 compliant video card or driver.

This has now been outdated by the Windows versions but if you still have a PC of around 166Mhz and Windows 95/98 then this would get you full speed emulation if not the cleanest.

Simply unzip the file to a directory and run kgen.exe

Download

BIOS Files

These files are needed for optimum usage of these emulators (except KGEN). You will have to configure each emulator to look for these files. Refer to the readme file for each emulator.

Download

The ASPI Layer

This is a small driver that allows programs to access functions of CD ROM drives under Windows. This is mostly applicable to versions of Windows previous to XP, however an APSI layer can be installed with no problems.

In the case of these emulators: the ability to load Mega CD/SEGA CD games and play their music.

Adaptec provide a download package. You can get it from http://www.adaptec.com and searching the support section for Windows ASPI Package. (v 4.70).

Other Operating Systems

There does exist emulators for Apple Mac and Linux however these are generally not as advanced as their Windows counterparts. You will probably be able to get full Mega Drive/Genesis but not the other system's like Mega CD and 32X.

Checkout http://www.dcemu.co.uk/content/ for a list of all available emulators and latest developments.