------------------------- ******************************* Sega Genesis CDX/Multi-Mega FAQ ******************************* ------------------------- By Shakey_Jake33 Released 2rd July 2003 Version 1.0 Best Read in Notepad with Wordwrap ENABLED This may seem like an obscure unit to cover in this day and age, but let me explain. About a month ago, I was lucky enough to pick up an unboxed American Genesis CDX for £99 (I live in Britain). Now it had always been a dream of mine since 1994 to own a Multi-Mega, so as you can imagine, I was excited. On searching the net however, I found there was very few places to read up about this unit. Suprising really, given what it is. Aside from Barry W. Cantin's superb SegaCD FAQ, there was little on the internet about the unit, and I felt I must fill the void. Informative tho the aforementioned FAQ was, I feel one tailored for the CDX itself would be best. Not many people may own one, but given it's collectors item status, those who buy one will want to read up on it I'm sure. Now, in this guide, the MegaDrive/Genesis will always be refered to as the 'Genesis', the MegaCD/SegaCD will be refered to as the SegaCD, and the CDX/Muiti-Mega will be refered to as the CDX. I'm sure I speak for every European Sega gamer that I cringe when I hear the MegaDrive refered to as a Genesis... it's a MegaDrive dammit, why do you Americans have to be different? (lol). But all the same, Genesis seems to be the most widespread name on the internet, so I feel I must fit in with the current standard. Plus my CDX is American, so it helps for consistancy at my end. Usual FAQ guidelines apply, no copying my work and claiming it as yours, I'd prefer credit it given to me when due. I don't care if people have it on their site, in fact I endorse, it, spread the knowledge! Just don't go changing stuff. And with my end of the bargin, this information is not all mine (bar the obvious which can be made by simply owning one). A lot of the information is picked up from Barry W. Cantin's excellent SegaCD FAQ, which you should all go check out at GameFAQ's ASAP, a lot of it I found on by reading the SegaXtreme forums, and some at the GameFAQ's forums. I can't remember indivudual member names I'm afraid, but I do give credit to these people... I will not be so rash as to claim this as all my own research because that's just not fair. Full respect and credit to the original sources. Now, on with the FAQ... ======== CONTENTS ======== 1. CDX Questions ---------------- 1.1 What is the CDX? 1.2 What is the MultiMega? 1.3 What new features does the CDX Provide? 1.4 So what actually does my CDX run? 1.5 Does it really run from Batteries? 1.6 What is the difference between this and the WonderMega? 1.7 How long was it under production for? 1.8 Are there any compatibility problems? 1.9 What CD Player functions are there? 2. Import Questions ------------------- 2.1 Is the CDX region protected? 2.2 How do I play import Genesis games? 2.3 How do I play import SegaCD games? 2.4 Does it play chiplocked games? 2.5 Can the protection be bi-passed through hardware? 2.6 I have an import machine, do I need a stepdown? 3. Utility Questions -------------------- 3.1 Does the 32X work with the unit? 3.2 If so, does it play 32XCD games? 3.3 Do the Master System converters work with the unit? 3.4 Does the Action Replay/Game Genie work? 3.5 Are there any incompatible utilities at all? 4. Thanks and Contacts ---------------------- Go look... ============= CDX Questions ============= 1.1 What is the CDX? -------------------- The Sega Genesis CDX (a.k.a Multi-Mega) is a Genesis and SegaCD in one unit, with the added function of operating as a personal CD player, running off of betteries (althought a power adaptor can be used for this also, it won't provide much help in a car...). It also, like the SegaCD, is compatible with CD-G discs. It is about as large as a standard personal CD player, with the only extra size being to fit the Genesis cartridge slot. It's also slightly heavier, but this is understandable. The unit takes a standard Genesis 2 power adaptor, which fits into the top of the unit. It also uses the Genesis 2 style A/V leads, which annoyingly resides in the right of the machine, meaning you have to have a 2 inch gap at that one side. No biggie. The left side of the unit has 3 features, a headphones socket, which works for both CD's and games, along with a volume control. This was heavily missed with the Genesis 2, so this is a welcome addition. There is also a line out socket for hooking up to a hi-fi system. The front of the unit has controller port 1 on the far left, a power button in the middle, and controller port 2 on the far right. This spacing looks nice, if causing annoyances with the 4-way multitap, but more on that later. Above this there are the unit controls. From left to right we have a small Open button to open the CD lid, a 'backwards button' followed by a forwards button, both of course for CD playback, a small LCD screen in the middle displaying the current track number (including which audio track it's currently playing in-game), as well as displaying 'Access' when it's loading. Following this we have a Play/Pause button and a Stop button, again both for CD playback, and a small blue reset button. The unit itself apparently came packaged with a 6-button controller, a power adaptor, a Red-White-Yellow style A/V cable (probably an RF cable in Europe), along with the Sega Classics 5in1 pack (which contained Streets of Rage, Columns, Super Monaco GP, The Revenge of Shinobi and Golden Axe), Sonic CD and Ecco CD. Overall, this unit is the Sega gamer's dream. It's portable, it can run all your Genesis and SegaCD games, it will play your Master System games with the adaptor, it *does* actually work with the 32X, and it can be used as a CD Player to boot. Very nice. 1.2 What is the MultiMega? -------------------------- Multi-Mega is the European name for the unit. Being a Brit, and being used to the name MegaDrive, I perfer this name, but seeing as my unit is American, I'm used to calling it this. It's easy to confuse the name 'CDX' with the import playing device of the same name mind. 1.3 What new features does the CDX Provide? ------------------------------------------- The most obvious advantage is it's portability... it's much smaller than the Genesis 2, comparable to the Genesis 3... so you can take the thing on holiday. It would be quite a trek to manage to cart your Genesis and SegaCD anywhere easily. Besides this, there's the headphones and line out ports, which Genesis 2 owners were unlucky enough to not get on the main unit. The CD-Rom seems to be faster, loading times are generally far shorter than with the SegaCD. It also uses a later bios revision (version 2.21). I do remember reading that this bios revision also helps speed up CD accessing times. 1.4 So what actually does my CDX run? ------------------------------------- It runs the following - -All Non-Chiplocked American and European Genesis games. -Chiplocked American and European Genesis games, region depending. -SegaCD games, region depending. Including CDR's. -Audio CD's, both standard and small size. -CD-G and CD-EG discs. No it does not play VCD's, nor photoCD's. The cartridge slot is not big enough for Japanese games. The Genesis portion seems to be similar to the Genesis 2 for compatibility. 1.5 Does it really run from Batteries? -------------------------------------- The CD player portion does yes. It runs on 2x AA batteries, and actually lasts a very long time, a rarity in the era. You need a power supply for the Genesis and SegaCD, but given how much these things probably guzzle, this is understandable. Anywhere with a TV should have a plug socket anyway. 1.6 What is the difference between this and the WonderMega? ----------------------------------------------------------- On paper, the WonderMega (a.k.a X'Eye) is probably better. The WonderMega features a MIDI connection, ability to use 5' CD's, among other features. It was about as big as a Genesis 2 with a SegaCD2 mind, so portability was not really an option with the WonderMega. The whole appeal of the CDX was it's portability, and the WonderMega is rendered a little pointless when it's the same size as both units combined, and more expensive too. It's also harder to find, being made my JVC as opposed to Sega. The WonderMega is probably better, but unless you have a real need for MIDI, then you'd be just as well off with a Genesis 2 and SegaCD2... 1.7 How long was it under production for? ----------------------------------------- About half a year. Mine says June 1994. Production was halted when the 32X was released in late 1994. I suspect Sega never meant it as a mainstream product anyway, more of a novelty. It was relased when the SegaCD was dying too, so it would have been illogical for Sega to continue production into the 32X and Saturn era. 1.8 Are there any compatibility problems? ----------------------------------------- One or two. Every single Genesis game I've ever tried has worked 100% fine. Even Virtua Racing. I've not heard of a game not working on this unit. The SegaCD portion however is a tad more fussy. It is believed that the following games do not work - Radical Rex Terminator Who Shot Johnny Rock? Jurassic Park is said to take a long time to load, but does actually work. Some people have reported issues with Lunar Silver Star... hanging on menu's and the like. For ever person who claims it does not work tho, about 5 claim it does. I'm pretty sure it works fine. It's worth remembering people say the same about the SegaCD2, so it might be an issue inherited from that. 1.9 What CD Player functions are there? ---------------------------------------- It's all standard affair really. Play/Pause, Stop, Track Forward/FForward, Track Backwards/Rewind. There's also a small LCD screen with the track number, along with the volume control. What else do you need? No you need all this fancy bass boost stuff? No. ================ Import Questions ================ 2.1 Is the CDX region protected? -------------------------------- It has the same protection as the Genesis and SegaCD. This includes chiplocking on later games, Herz-rate protection, Langauge protection, region checking on SegaCD games etc. 2.2 How do I play import Genesis games? --------------------------------------- Depends what you need to run. Both the American and European versions of the unit can run non-chiplocked games from both regions. I run most of my European games on my American CDX perfectly fine. The cartridge slot size is big enough for both American and European types of cartridge shape. You cannot, however, use Japanese games out of the box. Both chiplocked and normal. They are curved on each side and are too big to fit into the slot. You can play Japanese games by what's called a pass-through cart. These were an early way of using import games on original Genesis machines by basically extending the cartridge port... much like on a Game Genie. It was designed for people who did not want to cut that cart port to be wider to make the carts fix. Sega soon got wise to this however and implemented chiplocking. It is for this reason that I do not recommend this unless you want to run a specific game that you know is not chiplocked... later games will not work on a passthrough. Another more common method is the usage of an Action Replay or Game Genie. On these, you could enter a code to skip past the chiplocking protection. It was a little fiddly having to enter a code, but it worked a charm. And these carts are quite common. Japanese games work fine too, chiplocked or not. There are also carts on there which have switches on them. Ususlly one for region, and one for Herz rate. These make the game think they are running on a machine of a certain region or refresh rate, and act accordinly. These are very clever, and easier to use than a Game Genie or Action Replay, but also quite rare. Overall, considering the rarity of a switch cart, and Game Genie or Action Replay seems the easiest option, although those who have a large collection of early Japanese games can't really go wrong with a cheap pass-through. It's worth mentioning that Sonic 3, although chiplocked, works 100% fine when linked onto Sonic & knuckles (which is not chiplocked). Also, I'm pretty sure all EA games are region-free. 2.3 How do I play import SegaCD games? -------------------------------------- The only legit way I know of is using a product called the CDX (yea, it's got the same name...). There were many different models of these released, all seemingly being compatibile with different games. I've never used one of these, but I gather you will need a few different ones to get full (or near enough) compatibility. It pluged into the Genesis cart port and, from what I can gather, bi-passed the SegaCd bios in order to achieve it's region-free ability. Another more dodgy method is to make an ISO image of your game and patch it with a program called SCDConv, and then burn the patched image. Look on Google for this, it's easy to find. The SegaCD didn't have copy protection (with CD writers being dream beasts at the time), only region protection, so once you have patched the image and burnt it back onto disc, it should boot fine with no modifcation. There is not 100% compatibilty, but most games work fine. The only issue here being some audio syncronisation problems where a game is designed to run at a specific Herz rate. There is no way around this. 2.4 Does it play chiplocked games? ---------------------------------- As said earlier in the FAQ, it's still region dependant. 2.5 Can the protection be bi-passed through hardware? ----------------------------------------------------- In theory, yes. I've not read a FAQ of someone bringing up the guts to open up their CDX tho... and would you wanna hardware mod your baby anyway? Course not. 2.6 I have an import machine, do I need a stepdown? ---------------------------------------------------- Actually, you can just pick up a MegaDrive 2 power adaptor and use it on an American CDX fine. I'd persume it's the same vice versa. You can use a stepdown if you reeeeeally want to use the plug that came with it tho... but what's the point? A Genesis 2 is probably cheaper these days. ================= Utility Questions ================= 3.1 Does the 32X work with the unit? ------------------------------------ Contrary to popular belief, it does acually work. It's very fiddly tho, I don't think the clips all work, and it needs to be removed when you want to insert a CD, but it does actually work, if rather flimsly. The consfusion comes because the 32X manual claims it does not work at all, but it's merely unsupported. 3.2 If so, does it play 32XCD games? ------------------------------------ I'd presume so. I've never tried, but I see no reason why not. All 32XCD games are avaliable on the standard SegaCD anyway, in cut down form. 3.3 Do the Master System converters work with the unit? ------------------------------------------------------- The second generation model does apparently work. By second generation, I mean the one thta was more like a pass-through cart designed for the Genesis 2, as opposed to the massive thing designed for the Genesis 1, which I suspect would not fit. This is actually really cool, the second generation cart is about the size of Sonic & Knuckles, so it's small, and means your CDX is compatible with yet another console! 3.4 Does the Action Replay/Game Genie work? ------------------------------------------- Yes the do, dispite popular belief. The CDX seems to be similar to the Genesis 2 in archetecture, so you can presume whatever works on that will work on the CDX. 3.5 Are there any incompatible utilities at all? ------------------------------------------------ Apparently the EA 4-way multi-tap does not work due to the spacing of the controller ports - It relies on them being nect to eachother. You can get around this by using 2 controller extention cables. I an unaware or any other compatibility issues. ====================== 4. Thanks and Contacts ====================== First off, I'd like to thank Barry W. Cantin again for his SegaCD FAQ, without which this would probably not have been possible. On top of this, credit to the SegaXtreme and GameFAQ's SegaCD forums for little tid-bits of information I learnt. Hi to lily (love ya!), Tiles44, Monaro, S Walch, Rick, Jiomand, Timberwolf and..well.. you know who you are, I'm tired. Big thumbs up to all people in the current Sega scene - keep the spirit alive guys! (C) Shakey_Jake33 2003