The State of Pico Emulation (as of 2012)

Now that the Pico has a large amount of ROMs available for it, it's much easier to gauge the compatibility and accuracy of emulation of the Pico on emulators.

Unfortunately, it seems many Pico games have problems even besides the inability to use particular inputs.

Let's take a look at some ROMs being emulated here.



The "Professor Pico" games in particular tend to have glitched sound and be crash-prone. The "Mickey no Yukai na Bouken" game also has glitched voices.
And speaking of crash-prone, in Kega Fusion "Futari wa Pretty Cure" crashes right on the title screen. And while you can get past this in Picodrive, the game has noticable speed glitches, rapidly slowing or speeding up.
Many games also don't display all of their pages correctly - for example, I can't seem to access page 5 (out of 6) in "Huckle and Lowly's Busiest Day Ever" on Kega Fusion for... some reason.

There's probably an assortment of other issues I haven't noticed as well. Either way, I hope these all get fixed someday.

"Sega Pico" Youtube channel.

Just letting everyone know that I subscribed to the Auto-Generated Sega Pico Channel on Youtube.

This gives me pretty easy access to many of the Pico videos that pop around the internet. :)

I'll let you know if anything interesting shows up! In the meantime, a bit of trivia: What's the Sega Pico video with the most views?

By a long shot, it turns out to be one I uploaded myself years back - an edited recording I did of the Pico game "Ojamajo Doremi Dokka~n".


I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising that with the sheer amount of Pico vids I upped one of mine would be the one, but... this one in particular? I was kinda thinking the Pokemon games would blow more people's minds...

Pico Accessories 01: Watch out, you're gonna crash. Ah.

I hope to do a series of articles on Japanese Sega Pico accessories.
There's a significantly large amount of them, and they're needed to play many of the games in the Pico's library. But of course, you probably never heard of them because, well, Japan-only content, as usual.

Let's start with one that's really easy to understand just by looking at it:

The Drive Pico.

Which Pico model is best?

I recall at least a few people asking me questions about various Pico models in the past, so I suppose it'd be a good time to write this one down. :)

To start, there's a (probably still incomplete) list of Pico models, reivisons and editions over at Sega Retro.
While the sheer quantity of models seems high, there's one very important thing to note - With one notable exception, compatibility differences in most NTSC Pico models are few.
Japanese Pico games can boot on US Pico consoles without much hassle, and the inverse likewise. Their compatibility is one and the same.
Therefore, what would probably be the best solution would be to simply grab the cheapest Pico model you can. Most likely, this model will be a MK49325 Majesco US Pico. Of course, if you want, you can pay a bit more and get one of the multi-colored "Kids Communication Pico" Japanese models to have a more stand-out piece. I myself have a MK49002 Sega US Pico. The most common Japanese Pico systems available on eBay and Yahoo Japan Auctions appear to be Kids Communication Picos.

(Hey, look! Those Amazon listings on the right? There's a kinda-reasonable Pico right there!)

Whether your Pico models is from the USA or from Japan, it can pretty much play anything - except, that is, the StoryWare designed for the Mixt Book Player Copera.
This Japanese site has some good info on the Copera, including comparisons to standard Pico models.
Copera software, quite simply, will refuse to boot on a non-Copera model. The reasons are probably grounded in the hardware additions that the Copera has compared to the regular Pico model. Copera software also isn't emulated yet, sorry!

As I have never seen a Copera console for sale, I do not know what it'd potentially sell for, but the "exclusivity" factor will probably set it fairly high. Still, how much would you be willing to pay for compatibility with 10 more games?

Getting this large pair out of the way...

I'll just ask this simple question to Bandai someday...
"Why on earth did you think Cutey Honey, of all things, made a good Pico game?"

Then I'll ask them this...
"Why does that sequence from 3:10 to 3:18 in this video exist in a Pico game?"

I mean, honestly, my perverted little mind is enjoying this greatly, but regardless, this is a bit crazy.

Just a fair bit of warning, "Cutey Honey" is among the Storyware packs I sent to Team-Europe, so a ROM may be coming along soon. Brace yourselves, parents.

I'll Novotrade you, but not my Appaloosa.

Before I start writing anything, let me link you folks to Team-Europe's blog.
Today's a good day for me, because those USA Pico dumps came from Storyware carts I supplied to them. :D

... Now, speaking of USA dumps, I've actually been trying to look into the USA games in terms of proper developer credits. This is in part because in a few of the games you can actually find the credits somewhere in there. For example, "Huckle and Lowly's Busiest Day Ever" and "Tails and the Music Maker" have credits, hidden as easter eggs, as selectable objects right on the title screen listing the appropriate Novotrade developers.

Sometimes looking at prototypes can be helping in figuring out who developed what, too. For example, I examined the "Tails and the Music Maker" prototypes that Hidden-Palace.org released a long while back. And it turned out the "first" one wasn't actually "Tails and the Music Maker"... it was "Magic Crayons", but with header data blanked out. When you compared it with the next "Tails" prototype that actually had Tails data, you could tell that "Magic Crayons" code was used as the basis because there were a few holdover elements apparent, such as the preliminary "PICO" splash screen.

You can also note coding similarities between games. The made-for-US Pico games have a fairly different "flavor" from Japanese ones. Novotrade games in particular tend to have "minigames" that can go for a prolonged time compared to a Japanese game's short games, chiptune music that sounds "simpler" than Japanese games, and are more focused on directly giving lessons. Compare "Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld" to "Tails and the Music Maker" and you can see easily how two developers can approach the Pico radically differently, even with the same characters as a basis.

I have a good hunch that Novotrade actually developed a huge majority of the games made for the US Pico audience, but more research has to go into that to confirm it, especially since US Pico games rarely even had developer or publisher logos like Japanese Pico games do. Of course, finding Japanese Pico game credits proper is hard, too...

... Apologies if this one sounds a bit more complicated than my "I'm trying to write for beginners" articles from earlier.

Now, SegaPico.com redirects to here.

Just thought I'd make that announcement on here. You can now access my blogspot from http://www.segapico.com/ just like it's... well, a dot-com site.

Pretty sweet news for me, huh? :D

Now if only I had a really sweet blog appearance worthy of a .com domain... Well, I'll be sure to tinker around with it, anyhow. I remember getting The site that used to be Satellablog to look kinda neat... What I'd like to have as a design for this site would be one that is inspired by the Sega Toys "Kids Communication Pico" models.

A real informational Pico article may come around later in the day as soon as I decide what to toss in. Probably something non-Japanese Pico for a change.

How importing Pico games can add up in price.

This is a bit of a followup to the previous article on purchasing Pico games, and tells a bit of my experience with import titles.

I initially started finding import games when they appeared on eBay, and purchased a couple before deciding to trying a look at Yahoo Japan Auctions.

I managed to purchase two games - "Cutey Honey" and "Pocket Monsters Advance Generation: Hiragana! Katakana! Kakechatta!" - before I decided it was costing too much money for me at the time to continue.

Here's the funny part; the base price of both those games -combined- were 500 yen. A price one would typically consider "cheap" at that time (It was pre-Tsunami, so the yen wasn't as strong against the USD as it is currently). The final price? 5,140 yen. A whole digit was added.

The factors that raised the price included the shipping charges, with 2,310 yen for small packet airmail, and commission and bank fees for the services I was using to send these games to me.

In comparison, if I was a Japanese native, I'd probably have just needed to pay around 1,800 yen at most.

I've also had to pay ~$65 USD to ship a large lot of US Pico games internationally, showing how it's more expensive to send the domestic games out internationally than it is to obtain them! (More on that later.)

Note that in Japan, besides having basic "Storyware" cartridges, the Pico also had mulitple special accessories, such as the Drive Pico and the Fishing Pico. There are also some fairly unique Pico hardware variants specific to Japan. I have not even attempted to send something like that over my way yet.

It makes me wonder, how would a theoretical "Catch 'em all" collector handle the possibly sky-high prices just to have this stuff shipped to his or her house?

I suppose the old saying "crack is cheaper" applies even for games for preschoolers...

Buying Pico Storyware: Where to go? How much to pay?

Alright, you may consider this a sort of beginner's guide to Sega Pico "Storyware" collecting. (as of the time of it's writing, anyhow.)
This will hopefully set you off into being able to find the Pico games you want for a price that won't utterly embarrass you.

Let's start with... oh! Those Amazon listings I put on the sidebar!
I'll start by reminding you all that the Amazon listings are all third-party sellers who probably have used consoles and games.
How about them? Well, it depends. If you want to get a Pico system, that $8.99 one appears to be a reasonable option there, and some of the games are cheap. Also, I've liked using Amazon e-Certificates in the past.

But.. who in their right mind would want to pay that much for Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld?

Word of Advice which mostly applies to USA Pico collectors: If you paid more than $50 for any one game in your own region, you're probably being ripped of. These games were produced in solid quantities and currently are not in high demand at all.
It's possible this is true with other regions as well, but I'm not as familiar with how it is in other countries. Also, when you're purchasing and importing from other countries more factors can play into the price, such as shipping and deputy service charges.

So, how about eBay? Let's run a "Sega Pico" search.
Currently, the best way to get started grabbing Pico games is to find a cheap eBay lot and snag it. You'll likely be the only bidder. Easy as pie, you'll get 2-5 Pico games, and that's kinda like... a quarter of the Pico's US library as it is. Ha ha ha.

The import Japanese games are probably good deals as long as they're under $45 or so, but anything $65 or so and you're more likely to find a better deal checking Japanese shops.

You might also have noticed some "Beena" listings... ahh, gotta save stuff for later, huh?

Oh, I suppose I should toss the potential non-US readers a bone here, huh?
eBay UK Pico Listings
eBay DE Pico Listings
eBay FR Pico Listings
And of course;
A search on "ピコ" in the "Games" category on Yahoo Japan Auctions.

So, with this knowledge, try grabbing some games!
"What will my investment get me?", you ask?
Well, you might get gamer cred. You might get a good tool for a baby-sitting job. You might get the Angry Video Game Nerd's condolences and sympathy. In an unlikely scenario, you might get future collector's items that will be profitable to sell. In an even more unlikely scenario, you might get actual enjoyment and fun while playing these games with your adult mind.
Is any of that relevant to your interests? Probably not, but hey, there's bound to be some other good reasons down the line.

Pico Combat: Bandai's Fixation on Violence in Edutainment.

Man, I'm loving the titles I make for these entries so far.

... Anyway!

Bandai was also a substantially large Pico supporter, making significant contributions to the Pico's library both in terms of sheer quantity and, um... the "strange novelty value" some of the games have.

I'll focus on one example in particular in this entry;

This game here is "Kamen Rider Agito and Kuuga Wild Battle" for Pico, dumped by Team-Europe a while back. If you're unfamiliar with Kamen Rider as a franchise, then I'll toss around Wikipedia links.

This article's gonna focus on the fact that what you're seeing here is clearly a "violent video game" on the Pico.

Of course, it needs to be said that at that time, Japan's censorship standards were light and lax compared to other countries. Fist of the North Star had to spawn from somewhere, after all.

Not that this is anywhere near the level of Kenshiro's head-sploding adventures. But this probably would not fly in the international Pico market. If you need any proof of that, recall that Sonic the Hedgehog's Gameworld got censored pretty heavily.

Bandai put a pretty substantial amount of Tokusatsu-based games on the Pico, including games based on Sentai and Ultraman. Here, in fact, is a strangely similar game based on Hurricanger and Gaoranger.


They also made a lot of Mahou Shoujo stuff... but that's for another article.

Also, just to get this out of the way...

THIS SITE HAS NO RELATION TO, AND IS NOT DISCUSSING, THE "BOKU NO PICO" ANIME SERIES OR ANY ADULT-RATED ANIME.

As an advance warning, if you comment on the blog asking or joking about that, your post will be deleted and ignored.

Not that that's probably gonna stop any of the wisecracks about it. Even Google tends to throw "Boku no Pico" related results at me when I'm running a search on "Sega Pico" content.

In all seriousness, while I may have a bit of a snarky, occasionally mocking tone compared to the Pico's usual positivity and encouragement, I assure anyone who's reading this blog that I will strive to keep the main contents of the blog as "Safe for Work" as the Pico itself is. (That is, if you'd really want to be caught at work playing a game console designed for preschoolers.)

If you want to see under-aged boys doing nasty things to each other, I'm certain you'll be able to find it elsewhere. Just not here, nope.

The Pico's Inconsistent Mouse Infestation.

I figured I'd start the blog with an article based on what my latest Youtube upload related to the Pico was.

As it turned out, it was related to someone who you should find pretty familiar; Disney's most iconic face, and Disney's representation on the Pico, can be a pretty interesting thing to talk about.

Let's start by linking the video I was referring to;


This Pico game is "Tokyo Disneyland Toon Town Mickey no Boku wa Untenshu", ROM dumped recently by Team-Europe. This was a Japan-only Pico release... and just one of many of these, at that.

Posting whatever else I upped in relation would possibly flood the blog post, so I'll just say to run a search on Youtube for titles such as "Tokyo DisneySea Mickey to Asobou", "Mickey to Ooki na Furudokei", "Mickey no Boku wa Meitantei", and of course besides the Mouse, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, The Lion King, and 101 Dalmations (I missing anyone?) all have games of their own. Yes, that's a lot of Disney. There's more Disney than there is pretty much any other single franchise on the Pico - even more than anything Sega 1st-party, such as Sonic the Hedgehog. Many of the Disney games actually were made by Sega themselves, Sega Toys, or Kodansha.

Disney had such a strong association with the Pico that in Japan, the game "Mickey no Yukai na Bouken" was the first game published on the console. That game probably deserves a bit of an article of it's own, though. It's kinda on the quirky side...
Ah, yes, let me at least put up the TV ad for it that was uploaded on Youtube. That one's a goodie.

(Thanks to dosanko501 for this video)

Strangely, instead of localizing any of the Japanese game library, most non-Asian countries only got Novotrade's games, originally made for the American Pico audience. "Mickey's Blast Into the Past" is the notable Mickey-starring game there.

(Thanks to segaboyable for this one)
Geez, every game looks dramatically different, huh?


In spite of the large amount of other Japanese Disney games and how well they'd theoretically have sold, most of them remained unheard of to the foreign audience until I initially started researching the titles or until Team-Europe dumped the ROMs. I'll considering posting an article about possible explanations as to why this was as more information comes around.

But before that, we'll probably have more articles about Disney games. Tsh!

What is the "Pico" and why should anyone care?

I suppose I'll start with this obvious question. Obviously Wikipedia and Sega Retro got articles on this already, so I'll just make a summary - the "Pico" refers to the Sega-developed, 16-bit edutainment console targeted at preschoolers, and is also generally used when referring to it's hardware variants as well. (More on that later.) The internal hardware of the system is pretty similar to the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive console - enough so that, much like the Game Gear/Master System relationship, Pico games can be emulated to a certain degree with Mega Drive emulation as the basis.

There are a few notable things about the Pico at the time of it's release;
1) It was the first console which purposely marketed itself as an educational tool for preschoolers. Although there were "Edutainment" genre games on PC and consoles up to this point, this was the first time it was a dedicated platform.
2) The input method for the system is one of the most unique input methods to this date. Explaining it would take a while, but basically, it's like a touch tablet where you can also touch "Storybook" Pages. Speaking of which...
3) The "Storybook" cartridge format is also very unique to the Pico. The large cartridges had "pages" that could be turned like a book, and these pages would affect the gameplay of a game. A TV ad might help you if you can't grasp this already.


(thanks DaftPunkYoshialt)

Now, of course, you're probably saying "Jeez, that sounds like something dumb to make a blog about. I doubt there's any games that are actually fun on this thing." Well, to answer that question, I'll just say that the Pico has a few... interesting novelty titles. This video, which I uploaded 3 years back (When I was originally planning this blog out) may show you an example...

... Right, that's a (legitimate) Nintendo license on a Sega console. You've seen everything, you can shoot yourself now.

*cough**cough*

Of course, if this was just a one-off thing this wouldn't be too much to talk about, but don't worry, I've upped a good amount of videos now and got plenty of content to go on later. :)
And while I'm upping stuff, there's work being done on discovering more about the Pico (and it's successor, the Beena, which may be covered pending whatever may happen). So hopefully this will get updates at around the same pace as Satellablog does! Or more! Or only a little less! Either way. Catch you all later! ... in Pokeballs.

It took me 3 years to actually post stuff here, huh?

Welp, time to get this ball rolling. I got a good amount of Youtube videos and NicoNicoDouga has some content, too. I hope for this blog to be a bit like Satellablog, but with Sega Pico content. That being said, it's highly like I'll be more or less covering and review Team Europe's contents and the state of Sega Pico emulation. Also, the layout's all placeholder. Any web designers are welcome to suggest changes, lol! Anyway, the next post will be incoming in a bit! Stay tuned!