Last week, SEGA announced the Mega Drive Mini 2, a sequel to their original Mega Drive Mini console, which will include 50 Mega Drive and Mega CD titles from days past.

Although exciting news on its own, many may be wondering why SEGA chose to make another Mega Drive Mini as opposed to a mini of their other popular consoles like the Dreamcast or Sega Saturn.

In an interview with Famitsu, Sega’s classic hardware producer Yosuke Okunari revealed that while they did explore the idea, a Dreamcast or Saturn mini ultimately proved to be too difficult and expensive to produce, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on component manufacturing.

You can read a translation of the relevant parts of the article below, via @gosokkyu on Twitter:

…so, even if they'd forged ahead with a Saturn Mini anyway, it might've been extremely expensive—he jokes that he might like to release a mini that costs as much as an authentic modern console

— GSK | https://cohost.org/gosokkyu (@gosokkyu) June 3, 2022

@gosokkyu‘s thread includes many more details pulled from the article, including another tidbit revealing that the Mega Drive Mini 2 itself ran into some trouble despite being a more manageable project by comparison:

ultimately, they decided to just do it anyway, using whatever parts they could acquire for a decent launch, and so they're going into the Mini 2 with a much lower production run than anticipated, which they intend to focus on stocking within Japan

— GSK | https://cohost.org/gosokkyu (@gosokkyu) June 3, 2022

Notably, Okunari’s statements don’t entirely rule out the possibility of a Dreamcast or Saturn Mini in the future. With production and supply lines slowly returning back to normalcy, perhaps such a project will become more affordable in the future. Stay tuned for more as it comes.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.