SEGA Genesis

Herzog Zwei	RTS	1989
Budokan	Fighter	1990
Columns (Sega)	Columns
Xenon 2: Megablast	Shoot-'em-up
Blockout	Tetris	1991
Turrican	Shoot-'em-up
Zero Wing	Shoot-'em-up			All your base are belong to us
Chakan: The Forever Man	Arcade	1992		Ed Annunziatasmall>

Emulation

I have little experience with emulators for the SEGA Genesis. I merely got involved because I wanted to try out the SEGA Shadowrun game, which did not impress me very much. In general, SEGA was strong in platform games, while the SNES was strong in RPGs.

No SEGA emulator I tested was able to read ROMs directly out of the zip files, though some pretended to.

Kega Fusion

Fusion is a Sega SG1000, SC3000, Master System, Game Gear, Genesis/Megadrive, SegaCD/MegaCD and 32X emulator for Win9x/ME/2000/XP by Steve Snake. Version 3.5 came out early in 2006. From what I read it's better than any prior emulator, but I haven't tested it myself.

KGEN98/Gens

I am not absolutely sure that these emulators are the same, but I do get the strong impression.

KGen98 was my choice. It has a nice interface and good sound (always a problem with SEGA emulators), but I couldn't figure out how to use my joypad with it. Currently (December 2001) there is no homepage. I downloaded it from Emu Unlimited. You could also get it from Zophar's Domain or, doubtless, many other emulation pages. There is a Portuguese version. DOS.—There is now an emulator for Windows, KEGA, from the same developer. I have not tested this one.

Genecyst

by Bloodlust Software, the good people who also gave the world NESticle. This time there is no severed hand acting as a mousepointer, instead the menu bar itself drippes with blood. Oh yeah. Nevertheless Genecyst is a good emulator; according to Zophar it's still the fastest:

Genecyst was once the best Genesis emulator but is now sorely beaten by many others. The only point it its favour is its blazing speed which has become legendary. Well worth a download for some nostalgia.

On my system KGen98 had the better sound. DOS.

Generator

I was not very impressed by this one, I mention it because it is, unlike the other two, available for a number of platforms. And keep in mind that I tested it in 2001, it has been developed since. The main versions are DOS and Linux; ports exist for Mac, iPaq/Cassiopeia (under the name PocketGenesis), and Amiga. A Windows port from an older version is available on the main website.

There are, of course, many more. You will find them listed at the two download links I gave for KGen98.