The Berlin Wall

Shortly after World War II, a wall was built between the east and west halves of Germany, to prevent immigration from the eastern half, firmly allied with the Soviets, to the western half, which had embraced capitalism after the fall of Hitler. For many years, it was dangerous, even fatal, to attempt to cross the border running through the middle of this divided nation.

However, after the fall of communism in 1991, Germans decided that it was time to unite their country, and the wall was brought down in November of that year. Years later, after the end of the 16-bit console wars and Sega's shift to third party development, we're seeing a similar unification between the Super NES and its rival, the Sega Genesis. Games that were once exclusive to one format are making their first timid steps into territory that had once been barred to them, thanks to the efforts of talented hobbyist programmers.

Take for instance, the recently unveiled Super NES conversion of Sonic the Hedgehog by TiagoSC. It's not so much a "conversion" as it is a proof of concept, running a single stage without a confrontation with Robotnik at the end, but it nevertheless seems to suggest that the Super Nintendo can keep pace with the frantic blue hedgehog. Here, take a look at this:

It seems TiagoSC has all his Flickies in a row with this demo... the lower resolution of the Super NES makes Sonic larger and there's slightly more slowdown, but it nevertheless seems quite playable, certainly more so than the hack of the Speedy Gonzales game that turns Warner Bros.' hyperactive rodent into a needlemouse. It's a bit like that fan-made Sonic the Hedgehog port for the Game Boy Advance which demonstrated that the system was quite capable of handling the game... it was Sega that dropped the ball with its official conversion.

On the Genesis side of things, there's a perfectly competent port of the original Super Mario Bros. by Mairtrus... if you can get used to the music sounding like it should be played at the seventh inning stretch of a Tigers game. More impressively, Mega Man X, long exclusive to the Super NES, has been partially ported to the Genesis courtesy of TiagoSC... yes, the same guy who did the Sonic proof of concept for the Super NES. He doesn't pick sides in the 16-bit console wars, as you can tell from this footage of the Chill Penguin stage.

It's a bit blurry (possibly due to the capture software used; I don't know if this is running on real hardware) but it faithfully brings a small portion of Mega Man X to a console that had been long deprived of it. There are differences, but they mostly play to the strengths of the Genesis, with a digital, bass-heavy soundtrack. It's certainly more impressive than the official Mega Man game for the Genesis, which was farmed out to an outside developer and hit the system with the wet thud of a thoroughly drenched diaper.

Putting it simply, the wall between the Super NES and Genesis has definitively been torn down, and homebrewers are playing in the rubble. They haven't given us complete versions of games console loyalists lusted after in the early 1990s, but they've nevertheless given us a taste of what could have happened if the rivalry between Sega and Nintendo hadn't been so heated.