There is an advantage to doing this: Your requirements are only a Megadrive, so you can let the emulator worry about compatibility with different machines(PCs in this case). Also, Emulators pop up on other formats such Mac, Linux and so on.

There is a bit of a down side to this: you need a knowledge of Assembly - x68000 in the case of the Megadrive. And Assembly is harder to understand than C or C++(which is considered quite tough as it is!).

I'm only getting started in Assembly(C64 and Spectrum), but if the goal is to make a Megadrive game, I would recommend Assembly for the Amiga as it too uses the x68000, and there is decent amount of documentation for it on the net.

So go for it, but just remember not to underestimate the difficulty of Assembly programming.

Quote:Original post by The King2
I really don't think this is that easy, even getting the knowledge might be a bit diffucult... just my opinion.

Trust me, documents for the Mega Drive have been scattered about everywhere. In fact, I'm making a game for the Mega Drive for the sake of it:



http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7354/rhomget.gif

But, beware that programming for the Mega Drive will be unlike any other hardware you'll find out there: the video hardware doesn't have a framebuffer at all, but two scrollable tilemaps, a fixed tilemap (optional) and sprites flying around the screen. It is all calculated on raster time, so you need to load as much data to video hardware as possible in vertical blank. Also, there are four palettes of 15 colors each (plus transparent). And there are also other features but you usually won't pay much attention to them (most games didn't even use those).

Also, 99% of people here in GDNet will tell you that you should make a game for PC or go with XNA or something like that, but let's be fair: if somebody goes with an old console, it's because somebody wants to do it for that console and nothing else. It's a hobby, period.

EDIT:

Quote:Original post by Prospero_X3
And for documentation there is the official sega documents that you will be able to get your hands on this goes by the title of "sega2f" if you google that it should be the first result. I haven't linked to it as I don't know how legal it is with it being official documentation.

sega2f.doc is broken and incomplete x_X Look up for GenesisSoftwareManual.pdf instead.

Also something that I forgot to mention: assembly is pretty much your only decent choice. The C environments aren't perfect, and Basiegaxorz won't let you do much, really =P

EDIT 2: oh, and by the way, Prospero_X3, no, I don't think it's legal, it has a notice against copying and also it has the label "confidential" on it (I laugh whenever I see that on console documentation, it always gets leaked). I should really make a book or something about programming for the Mega Drive...

[Edited by - Sik_the_hedgehog on July 3, 2010 11:01:25 AM]

Re: Sik.

Please do write a book on Megadrive programming! ^_^

Except that Sega isn't Nintendo. I mean, Watermelon Games (the ones making Pier Solar) even dared to ask Sega for an official license (WTF?). Of course Sega didn't give them one, but they didn't seem to care at all that they were making a commercial game for their console either... Nintendo would have sued them to death by this point =P

But yeah, book is more of a way to say it, I doubt it would be a real book, but more like some on-line HTML "book". I need to get a place to host it, though >.>

Definitely do it Sik! ^_^