Remembering… Sega Mega Drive

David Hayward rekindles his youth and looks at one of our favourite consoles

I was surprised to find out the other day that among the various tablets, phones, MP4 players and whatnots, one of the most successful Christmas gifts of this year so far is a re-release of the Sega Mega Drive.

Sold by Argos and other such shops, this new version of an old favourite is more of an ARM-powered emulator with the ability to take the original hardware – in terms of the controllers and the cartridges – but it lacks some of the support for the special FX chips that appeared on the special cartridges. However, for the sake of £40 or thereabouts, it’s a great little console for modern TVs and living rooms.

Top 5 Things You Can Never Find

Well, not when you want them, anyway…

1 Chargers

If you’re anything like us, you have several drawers full to bursting with chargers. You know what you should have done is label each one of them to identify what they’re supposed to connect to, but instead you just chucked them together with the very real intention of doing it later. The problem, of course, is that often ‘later’ doesn’t arrive until you actually need one of them, and then you spend hours trying each one in turn without success. What you will find, however, is loads of stuff you were looking for last week but couldn’t locate.

Rescue Your Video Tapes V8

Recover and convert those old video tapes into a digital format

Ithink it’s fair to say that we’ve all embraced digital technology in just about every form. The most visible is the mobile phone, a device encompassing everything from a camera to a GPS, media player organiser and web browser. And it also makes phone calls. Yet there are people still hanging on to analogue devices, simply because they have media recorded on them. This is particularly true of video tapes, either recorded on tape-based video cameras or on VHS tapes (remember those!).

Last Horizon

We attempt to save humanity by reaching to the stars

Although the big game studios have had some impressive titles launched of late, the likes of Fallout 4 springing to mind, it’s the indie game studios where the best creativity is springing from.

We’ve said it before that the indie scene is on fire at the moment and coming up with some of the most imaginative PC games. But the ones that tend to stand out the most for us are those that include an element of retro-like gaming, with some clever mechanics and physics, while still sticking to an original storyline.

BenQ GW2455H

A flicker-free screen at an exceptional price

There’s still plenty of life left in the 24" monitor market. Talk of this screen size being the last generation, with 27" being the new poster child for monitor companies, is far from correct, with many manufacturers still producing some excellent examples.

XFX AMD Radeon R9 390X Double Dissipation Core Edition

XFX lures hard-core gamers with a monster R9 390X design

As regular readers are aware, we pride ourselves on bringing you technology that does something worthwhile at an affordable price. But occasionally as a reviewer I need to take a walk on the wild side – a phrase that certainly sums up the XFX R9 390X Double Dissipation Core Edition.

If you like subtle stuff, then I’d look away now, because this kit has all the balletic finesse of a maniac loose at a hammer convention.