ROM Hack Might it be theoretically possible to change ROMs in SEGA Mega Drive Classics?

Nazosan

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So the recent SEGA Mega Drive Classics release sets up kind of a rather unique emulator setup with a virtual TV, cartridges, crickets chirping outside at night, etc etc. Overall it's actually kind of a really nice emulation setup that is, in its own way, quite enjoyable. It has most of the amenities (I still wish there was a 2xSaI resize as I feel it strikes a better balance between sharpness of interpolation and still blurring the harsher edges of something low resolution, but it rarely makes it even into non-commercial emulators these days.) However, for some reason they've left out some of the most important games from the system (I guess setting up for selling another release even though there is no technical reason this one couldn't have had quite a lot more.) For instance, Sonic 3 is an obvious missing game glaring given that they have 1, 2, Spinball, and even Sonic 3D which is more technically advanced and much later chronologically than 3. I really would have loved to have seen some like Castlevania Bloodlines in there though. It seems like it would be great if I could just replace some of the ones I couldn't care less about with good ones. Unlike Nintendo's NES emulation, I feel like this offers something of actual value outside of just the emulation itself.

Anyway, I pretty much knew it wouldn't be simple, but I thought I'd at least check just to be sure. I extracted the ROMFS and most of it is standard Unity stuff I can't really do anything with. However, I found in /Data/GI/level1 a bunch of random two digit folders that have several files that look very suspicious. The .rsc.neo files vary fairly wildly, but most are within a reasonable range to be a Genesis/Megadrive game. However, I didn't see any that seemed large enough for a few I know of like Landstalker (which I guess is a 16Mbit game.) Perhaps they are compressed? (I wouldn't be shocked if they were even encrypted for good measure, though it would be pretty silly to encrypt at that level.) However, that one may not compress down to the nearest file I could find. What's more, I did see one that was around 28MB (though I won't say it couldn't just be resources for something else or something.)

This is all pretty much just guesswork. I don't know enough about this sort of thing and the file formats they might use to really know what to look for. If it is encrypted I'm probably stuck, but it would be really neat if it were maybe as simple as just using LayeredFS to drop in some ROMs and hopefully a new image for the box and cartridge label.

On the up side, it looks like replacing the annoying logo videos won't be hard to do.
 
Last edited by Nazosan,

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