While I’ve spend dozens, if not hundreds, of hours playing Genesis games on the Wii Virtual Console, I just recently jumped into the world of the Sega Genesis Classics Collection on Steam.

A far cry from the load-screen-heavy collections on consoles, the Genesis Classics Collection games boot up almost instantly from a menu within Steam. From the initial menu, there are options for resolution, screen size, filters, and controller configuration.

Unfortunately, unlike most Steam games, there is no option to take screenshots from within the client, but running FRAPS in the background solved that issue for me. A really nice feature in this version is the quicksave functionality; instantly accessed with the F5 and F9 keys.

As far as the emulation itself goes, I’ve been pretty impressed by the half-dozen games I’ve played so far. The frame rate is smooth, the visual quality is excellent, and I’m pretty sure the sound is spot-on as well, though I haven’t had a chance to boot up the Wii VC (or a Genesis) to compare.

Some screens taken with FRAPS:

Streets of Rage 2

ESWAT

While I still need to spend some more time with these games, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve played so far.  Time and comparisons will tell if these versions are better than the Wii Virtual Console Genesis releases (currently the gold standard), but the fact that these versions are a fraction of the cost of the Wii releases (and even less during the current Steam sale), make them worth considering.

If you’ve played some of these titles and have encountered issues (or know of the perfect USB controller for playing Genesis games on PC), let me know in the comments!