An emulator is a software program that pretends to be something else. For example, VirtualPC and VMware are commercial emulators for the PC that emulate (pretend to be) another PC. Daemon Tools is a commercial emulator of a CD drive so that people can mount CD and DVD images as if they'd inserted discs into the computer. DOSBOX is a free emulator of the MS-DOS operating system so that people can play old DOS games. Virtual Console is a commercial emulator of old Nintendo games which runs on modern Nintendo hardware. And SEGA Genesis & Mega Drive Classics is a commercial PC emulator of the SEGA Genesis a.k.a. Master Drive.

The trouble is, it's not a very good emulator, and even if it was working as intended, it's missing features other emulators have. There are better emulators you can use instead!

It's very simple:

Games are computer programs.

Computer programs are stored as binary information. (a series of 1s and 0s)

Games on cartridges are still computer programs, still stored as 1s and 0s, just on cartridges.

A ROM file is when someone has taken the 1s and 0s stored on the cartridge and put them into a file on your computer. So there will be one ROM file for every game.

This is how emulators such as SEGA Genesis & Mega Drive Classics gets to the games. They are stored on your computer as ROM files.

There are several great free software[www.gnu.org] emulators of the SEGA Genesis / Mega Drive available on PC, but the one I recommend is PicoDrive[notaz.gp2x.de], and the way I recommend using it is through RetroArch[www.libretro.com]. RetroArch is a nice front-end that lets you play lots of emulators without needing to reconfigure your options for each one. Just setup your controls once, and you're good to go! But for those who like to tinker, it also comes with all the powerful options you'd expect.

Get RetroArch here![www.libretro.com]

You go to "Downloads (stable)" in the upper right, then Windows, then "x86_64" (if you have a 64-bit OS. Try the other one if it doesn't work) and then you'll see the download. Use 7-zip[www.7-zip.org] to unzip it, and then you can make a shortcut to retroarch.exe on your desktop.

When you launch RetroArch for the first time, you will want to set it to full screen, go in to the updates in the menu to get the PicoDrive core, and into the options to set up your controls. This should not be hard.

So, how to start playing? Once you've installed RetroArch, you just need to find where the ROM files are at on your hard drive. I am going to assume that you installed on the C: drive on a modern Windows OS like normal. If you installed somewhere else then hopefully you can find where the stuff is.

This guide is for Windows users. If you aren't on Windows, then you clearly already know enough about computers to not need a guide like this and that means you are awesome. If you don't know enough about computers to figure this out on your own and don't have Windows, then get Windows. (years later edit: I have genuine hope that 2022 will be the year we ditch Windows. Keep in mind that this comment about Windows was written back when it was true.)

Your games are here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sega Classics\uncompressed ROMs\"

Your workshop mods are here: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\34270\"

After you unzipped RetroArch, I said to make a shortcut on your desktop to RetroArch. So all you need to do is open those folders to find the ROMS and drag the ROM which you want to play onto the RetroArch shortcut icon, and you're good to go!

If it doesn't work, try going into RetroArch, select "Load Core" then "PicoDrive" and then try again.

And since you've paid for these files, you can put them on your phone or other device or whatever to use with whatever emulator you want on whatever device you want, which is how all software should work.

Please let me know if any of this doesn't work for you and I'll try to help!