Why in the blue sky doesn't Sega release an arcade compilation of THE ARCADE versions of all their games? Why do we need more Genesis compilations, over and over and over?
Because the actual hardware in the Genesis/Master System never really changed, but the hardware inside each cabinet could vary widely from game to game, meaning they would have to account for dozens of different graphic/sound/CPU chips, not to mention how many different
combinations of those chips might exist.
Now I hear you saying, “But what about emulators,
@PatrThom? There are bunches of emulators out there that can play cabinet games, why can’t Sega just bundle one (or more) of those?”
Ah, excellent question. And the short of it...is that Sega doesn’t own any of those emulators, so if Sega
tried to use any of those emulators, then Sega would be
stealing, and whoever wrote that emulator would sue the pants off Sega (and win!). Not only that, some of the emulators use code which comes with an agreement that
forbids commercial use, meaning that ultimately they would be forced to develop their own emulation engine,
from scratch (because they can’t cheat and reuse other people’s code), it would have to be highly optimized and fast (which means Sega would have to hire dedicated emulator people), and THEN they can start talking about releasing official cabinet ROMs to be used with their emulation product.
And then the people who use the already-existing, mature emulators will just import those ROMs into their emulators, and Sega will be screwed.
And they know it.
And that’s why they don’t do it.
—Patrick