SEGA Genesis Games on Vinyl? One Maker Actually Tried It

Throaty Mumbo continues coming up with new and inventive methods to connect old game systems with some very old storage techniques. His most recent effort was to determine if a SEGA Genesis game could be loaded off a vinyl record, and the simple answer is something between yes and no. The entire narrative demonstrates how far a basic audio signal can go in terms of getting classic game code functioning.

He used a special cartridge known as the Mega Everdrive Pro, which slots into the Genesis exactly like any other game. This one stands out since it has a USB port on top, in addition to all of the typical functionality. Instead of reading everything from a memory card within the cart, you may use the USB connector to send in game data from any old external source. Mumbo used this as the final piece of the puzzle, converting the game files into sound, especially audio tones at approximately 1200 baud (nearly 150 bytes per second). This is essentially the same approach employed by ancient cassette loaders and even some early modems, as he performed the conversion using a standard PC.

The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 was next, which is connected via a simple wire to listen to the audio tones coming in. It takes those tones, decodes them back into the original binary bits (the ‘1’s and ‘0’s that comprise the game code), and then transfers the clean data to the Everdrive cartridge over USB. The Genesis then handles the arriving code like any other game and runs it without issue. Mumbo initially tested it with a standard cassette tape. A regular player just fed the encoded audio into the Pico, and it worked flawlessly, with the Pico decoding everything without a single hiccup, and even some minor homebrew programs loaded and ran smoothly. One really interesting plasma demo appeared on the screen in no time at all.

Once the basic concept was proven, Mumbo grabbed a PO-80, a small record cutting and playback equipment designed for hobbyists. This thing can cut grooves into small five-inch plastic discs and play them back later, which is ideal for the single channel audio signal, but the PO-80 kit didn’t come with very clear instructions, so Mumbo had to do a lot of trial and error to figure out how to get all of the gears, belts, and wiring in the right places. He did, however, create a test disk with the encoded audio once everything was in order.

Unfortunately, the playback was not without issues, since the cheap gear simply couldn’t cut it. The grooves on the disc were extremely noisy, and the Pico was unable to extract clear data from the chaotic signal. No game began with the vinyl disc; might a higher-quality record and a little more fiddling have made a difference?

Better cutting gear would make a tremendous difference, you see, because pro record presses can cut those smoother, quieter grooves that bring out all the tiny nuances in the sound, but as long as the playback is crystal clear, the core principle of executing game code over sound remains valid. Mumbo eventually concluded that while it is not a horrible idea, it has several significant practical flaws. Of course, there’s a lot of chatter surrounding vinyl since it evokes nostalgia, and computers used to come with flexi discs that could install software. People used to put those thin little plastic records on a home turntable to receive fresh software. Mumbo reasoned, why not try the same approach with an ancient cartridge console from the 1990s.

In the end, the vinyl element didn’t work out, not because the concept was faulty, but because Mumbo was using a toy cutter. The audio-to-USB bridge he utilized had already been demonstrated to function on tape. Better tools would most likely make using a spinning disk a realistic option for playing classic SEGA games. Mumbo simply captured the entire situation to give others a clear picture of where the idea begins to come apart and the noise takes over.
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