I recently had a weird dream about a device similar to the old Game Genie cheat cartridges. But instead of cheating, this device let you plug an NES game cartridge into it, then plug it into a Sega Genesis and actually play NES games on the Genesis console. I looked online and found some modern adapters like the Retroport, but that seems like a recent thing with limited usefulness today. Was there ever a device back in the day that allowed cross-console play between NES and Sega Genesis? Something like a mod or adapter that let you play NES cartridges on a Genesis, or maybe something similar for other consoles?
4 Answers
Actually, something kind of close exists nowadays: devices like the Everdrive for Genesis use FPGA technology to play NES games on real Genesis hardware by loading ROMs off an SD card. It’s not a cartridge adapter for physical NES carts, but functionally it’s like playing NES games on Genesis hardware! As for back in the day, Sega had official adapters like the Power Base Converter to play their old Master System games on Genesis, but I’ve never heard of an official NES-on-Genesis adapter. Pirate or clone devices might have existed but weren’t widely known or reliable.
There were some interesting devices though! For example, the Super Game Boy let you play Game Boy games on the SNES by having most of the Game Boy hardware built right into the cartridge. Also, the Game Boy Player allowed Game Boy and Advance games to be played on the GameCube. However, these are all within one company’s ecosystem, unlike mixing Nintendo and Sega. True cross-company adapters for playing NES on Genesis seem not to have existed, likely due to huge hardware differences and licensing issues.
Exactly. The Super Game Boy is basically a full Game Boy crammed inside an SNES cart with some added video circuitry. No real emulation on the host console itself.
Nope, nothing like an NES-to-Sega Genesis adapter ever really existed back in the day. The only similar example would be the Sega Power Base Converter which let you play Master System (Sega’s older console) games on a Genesis, but that was within the Sega family, not cross-company. So NES games on a Genesis? Not officially or commercially, at least.
From what I’ve researched, some third-party pirate or clone devices tried cross-console compatibility, like the Tristar and Super 8 adapters for SNES that let you play NES games by having NES hardware inside the cart, just powered and controlled by the SNES. But Sega and Nintendo cross-compatibility was pretty much a no-go officially. The different CPUs, chips, and video systems made it super complicated, plus licensing was tight.
The Tristar sounds like exactly what I was dreaming about! The fact it had its own NES-on-a-chip inside is wild, basically using the host console just for power and input.
Yeah, that makes sense. The internal hardware and licensing would be a nightmare to overcome between completely different consoles.