These days, there are many excellent ways to play Sega Genesis / Mega Drive games. Unfortunately, not all methods of playing create savegame files the same way, which makes it tricky to do something like: Start a game on original hardware, continue it on the MiSTer…and maybe even load it up in a PC emulator for some easy screenshots! Luckily, there’s now a simple program that allows you to drop savegame files onto an exe and have it swap between two of the formats used:
Main Project: https://github.com/superg/srmtools
Executable Download*: https://github.com/superg/srmtools/releases/tag/v0.9
At the moment, there are two exe’s: One labeled “sav2srm” that converts savegames from the the .sav format (used by MiSTer & BlastEm) to the .srm format used by Everdrives. The second file labeled “srm2sav” does the opposite. These file formats may be compatible with more devices and emulators, but only those were tested at the moment.
To use the software, simply extract the exe’s to a folder on your PC and drop the proper savegame file on top. The original file is completely unchanged and the software will spit out a converted file in the same directory as the original. While testing on this software has been minimal, so far I haven’t run into any issues and was able to successfully trade savegames between platforms. Since the software doesn’t change the original file at all, it’s perfectly safe to use; Worse case, it just don’t convert successfully, with nothing damaged. Hopefully this project can be tested on other devices like the Mega SD and other popular software emulators as well!
I’d like to thank Rysha for writing the C code to make this happen, as well as Superg for turning the code into an .exe and hosting it on his github. It’s awesome that so many members of the retro gaming community donate their time to freeware/open source projects and tools like this will end up getting used for years to come!
*As a note, some web browsers might mark this zip file as “potentially dangerous”. It’s simply because it contains .exe files and there’s absolutely nothing to worry about!
