The Mega Drive Mini (Genesis Mini in the US) has been out now for some time. It’s a great little device with 42 built-in games, and has the advantage that it connect to modern televisions giving easier access to those without original hardware or old CRT televisions.
However, it is also fairly easy to add more games to the device (obviously you should only add games you have a licence for and I can’t link to ROMs online here). You can even add games to an external USB stick and add any number of titles to your device.
The best software used to do this is called Hakchi2 CE. It does require Windows to run, but can run in a virtual machine running Windows if you are on a Mac. You will find instructions online for installing and setting up the software.
The software also provides you with the ability to sort your games alphabetically or by genre (rather than a large list of potentially hundreds of titles), and comes with some default art for these folders. I wasn’t happy with what was available, and Inspired by some work on this done by a designer called @TheWez1981 I came up with my own folder art, mainly based on the art from the original Mega Drive cases themselves.
Alphabetical A–K
Folders
Hakchi2 CE can automatically split your games into alphabetical sub-folders. I’ve designed the folders to look like Mega Drive cases used in Australia and the EU. The character on the front of each case is from a game that would appear in a game starting with that letter; as an example, Alex Kidd appears on the A Folder as the game Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle includes that character (being the main character in the game). The # Folder (representing games starting with a number) was a little trickier as there are not many games that start with a number, hence the use of the submarine from 688 Attack Sub.
Within a folder it is possible to further sub-divide folders. In this case there is a general “Folder” folder that sticks with the visual theme, and a “Back” folder to help you go back in the tree structure. Finally, it is possible to display all the folders as Spines, in which case the spines are shown simply with the same naming as the folders.
Genres
Like alphabetical folders, Genre folders show a character that would appear in that particular genre of games. An example would be Echo the Dolphin appearing on the Adventure Folder, or Ryu from Street Fighter 2 on the Fighting Folder. Hakchi2 CE appears, by default, to have 12 genres. I’ve added a couple of extra genres in the collection for those wanting to do more advanced sorting.
Spine view of genres is also possible as you would expect, with the genre written along the spine.
Installing
Installing the folder art is simple: close Hakchi2 CE if you are running it; download the artwork and unzip the files; copy the folder to your folder_images folder (it should be located in your Documents\hakchi2 folder.
Once this is done, start Hakchi2 CE, and click on the Structure button. Under “Folder image set” select “Curmi-MegaDrive-Mini-Covers”. Now synchronise your art and games with your console or USB.
Note for Mac Users
If you are a Mac user on an Intel Mac, you can run Hakchi2 CE on Windows in VMWare, for example, and it should all work fine. If you are using an M-series Mac (Apple Silicon) you can run the ARM version of Windows on VMWare, but you may have difficulty with the driver Hakchi2 installs (or doesn’t, in the case of the ARM version of Windows).
I had some success using Zadig to install drivers, so that tool may be useful to you. If you can get the driver installed on the machine, and you decide to use an external USB for the extra games you add, you only need to get the driver installed once – so it could also be done on a friend’s Windows machine if all else fails. After that, you can just interact with the external USB under ARM Windows to update and sort your collection.
Finally
I hope the artwork is useful to someone out there. If there is demand I could make similar ones using Genesis style boxes, or Japanese Mega Drive style. Let me know in the comments.
Jamie