Mega-Pi

Linux

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Freedom report

One barScore 5.5

Free tierNo free tier on record
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely1 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

Mega-Pi is ranked #16 of 19 in Sega CD emulators on Freedom251. It runs on Linux.

Compared on Sega CD emulators

Free plan: Yes
Supported platforms: Raspberry Pi
BIOS requirement: required
Save states: Yes
CD audio support: Yes

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The record

Purpose: Mega-Pi is a bare-metal Sega Mega Drive/Genesis emulator designed to run on Raspberry Pi.
Boot and latency: The project says bypassing an operating system such as Linux enables near-instant boot times and ultra-low input latency.
Emulation core: Mega-Pi uses the Picodrive emulation core and the Circle bare-metal C++ framework.
Multicore design: The README assigns orchestration, video, audio, and input work to four Raspberry Pi ARM cores.
Sega CD support: It supports Sega CD/Mega CD games in .cue with .bin tracks and compressed .chd formats, and describes emulation of the Sub-CPU, PCM audio, CD audio, and rotation/scaling graphics hardware.
ROM formats: The emulator scans .bin, .md, and .gen Genesis/Mega Drive files, plus .cue and .chd Sega CD/Mega CD files.
Video and sound: The README describes 2× integer nearest-neighbor upscaling to 640×480 and 44.1 kHz stereo audio through the Pi PWM sound engine.
Controls: It supports USB gamepads and USB keyboards, with menu and gameplay shortcuts documented for each.
Favorites: Users can persist game favorites in SD:/roms/favorites.txt.
Setup requirements: Running it requires a FAT32 SD card, a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 kernel image, game files, and USB input devices; Sega CD games also require appropriately named BIOS files.
Build requirement: Compiling the project requires the GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain, and the Circle framework must be configured and built first.
Distribution: The repository page lists a mega-pi-release-v1.1.zip file and documents packaging a release archive.
Credits: The project credits R. Stange for Circle and notaz and community contributors for Picodrive.
BIOS setup: Sega CD support requires regional BIOS files named `bios_CD_U.bin`, `bios_CD_E.bin`, or `bios_CD_J.bin` in a `bios` folder on the SD card.

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Sega CD Emulators in 2026#16 of 19

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Sources

github.com/aloula/mega-pi· checked 2 Oct 2026
github.com/aloula· checked 3 Oct 2026