Sega Genesis on HDTV and Sega-16.com Interview

Mark Bussler Interview with Sega-16.com HERE.

I get a lot of traffic on my blog and some emails from people wanting to use their Sega Genesis on newer HDTVs and and projectors. Although you can probably get more technical information from the Sega-16.com website, the bottom line is that this IS possible and can look great, but it will NOT output a high-definition signal, only standard def.

I'm an avid "old-school" gamer and a complete Gen-X nerd, therefore I have a NES, an Atari 7800 and Sega Genesis all hooked up to an HDTV. I read up on some articles about how to get the Sega Genesis to output component video (which is supposedly possible but seemed expensive and tricky) so I passed on this. Since I knew it would output a better quality video signal than RF or Composite I opted to have my Sega Genesis modified with S-Video. You can read about that on an older blog post HERE.



Although the modded Sega does not look as good as HD games on the Xbox 360, the Sega Genesis with S-video does look much sharper and more vibrant than composite or RF. This will of course depend on how your tv handles standard def signals though. Not all HDTVs are the same. I have an LCD screen and it looks really good, so I'm pretty pleased. But you may not be. You may have to experiment.



That's my Atari 7800 Pro System above, note the gleaming stainless steel finish. Futuristic! Not sure what is Pro about it though.... can you make money playing Atari 7800 games? If so count me in for a Joust tournament.

The only way that I can think of actually "upconverting" the Genesis to an HD signal would be to run the s-video (or composite) output through an HD upconverter like i-Scan or something. I have not tried that and if you can afford one of those things you can probably pay Sega to manufacture you a new Genesis with HDMI (although I doubt they'd do that but you could ask...?)

I think my NES looks good on composite, it won't do s-video or component no matter what you do to it. You can modify an Atari to output s-video but I haven't gone that route. Maybe someday.... someday. One can dream. Berzerk and Yars' Revenge in glorious s-video clarity.



I borrowed a friend's PS3 while he was on a job and played through Resistance Fall of Man. It's a good game, is it up there with Bioshock and Yars' Revenge? We'll, that's a whole different blog post.

Incidentally you can read an interview with me on the Sega-16.com website HERE. Thank you to Tom Briggs and everyone at Sega-16 for supporting my film, Classic Game Room: The Rise and Fall of the Internet's Greatest Video Game Review Show. I hope that a few classic gamers out there enjoyed the film and our adventures back in the year 2000.