Sega Pico
English-friendly titles in this collection: 131
Tested with the PicoDrive (2.00-alpha1-019421c) core in RetroArch
File size (uncompressed): 162 MB
Format: .md
Do you remember LeapPad learning tablets? They had interchangeable books in them that interacted when a special pen was pressed on various objects from the page.
The Sega Pico was basically that from six years previous, but it also hooked up to a TV so that the interactions happened on-screen and often included actual console game elements!
It's a very unique system because it's practically a laptop-shaped Sega Genesis with a touch pad and improved sound. You'll find that there are quite a few games that have unexpectedly gorgeous graphics, too.
Most of the titles are aimed at educating small children, and a large chunk of those are of the "click on this thing to animate and make a noise" variety. However, there are some real random surprises mixed in there as well.
Special items included: Titles not in English that are easy enough to play without being fluent in another language.
Items removed: Non-working dumps, duplicates, prototypes or demos of games that eventually saw a full release, and titles that require proficiency in another language to play.
Additional information: Emulation for the Pico is super finicky. Generally, you will set your controller to switch between using the joystick buttons, the pen placed on a Storyware book, and the pen placed on the hardware's pad. Also, buttons set to "turn the page" back and forth.
The amount of Storyware images included is very minimal compared to the entire library - This is simply because there has not been a massive effort to find and scan the physical books. Getting the Storyware images to load is a bit of a manual process that is too long to explain here... Just play around with it in PicoDrive! If you are missing Storyware for a title, you can "move the pen around" while clicking the button and get a general gist of where your cursor is when characters or objects interact with your button presses.
Release notes: Stubborn games - These four games would not emulate correctly with PicoDrive due to software differences and required loading through different emulation instead. They were tested using MAME (0.262): "Hello Kitty no Tanoshii Omiseyasan," "Minna de Odorou: Oz no Mahoutsukai," "The Muppets: On the Go!," and "Unou Kaihatsu Series 8: Dolucky no Oekaki House."