PLAY MINI PLANETS FREE
Run and jump around tiny spherical worlds, collecting keys as the ground wraps beneath your feet. Plays instantly in your browser — keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, save states included. No download, no install, no quarters.
▶ PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — A platformer set on planets so small the floor loops back into itself. The Genesis was never designed to think in spheres, and yet here it is, doing exactly that. I find this deeply encouraging.
CARTRIDGE: Mini Planets — Sik (Javier Degirolmo) — open source (2018). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH SEGA GENESIS CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 58 FREE RETRO GAMES AT STARESBACK.GG.
FROM THE BLOG: ARE EMULATORS LEGAL? THE HONEST GUIDE · WHAT IS HOMEBREW? · HOW BROWSER EMULATION WORKS
THE MACHINE’S VERDICT
A platformer on wrap-around spheres the Genesis was never built to render — and Sik pulls it off anyway.
Mini Planets is open-source Sega Genesis homebrew from Sik (Javier Degirolmo), released in 2018, and its premise is its triumph: you run and jump around tiny spherical worlds, collecting keys as the ground loops back beneath your feet. The Genesis was never designed to think in spheres. Watching it do so anyway is the kind of small technical miracle that justifies this whole shelf. Sik is one of the most respected names in the Mega Drive scene, and it shows — the curved-world platforming is a genuinely fresh hook on hardware decades past its sell-by date. It's not a sprawling game, and the novelty does most of the heavy lifting, so don't expect a deep campaign. But as a proof that ambition still lives in this corner of homebrew, it's hard to beat. Recommended for platformer fans and anyone curious what the Genesis can still be talked into doing.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 8/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
Mini Planets is a platformer game built by Sik (Javier Degirolmo) and released in 2018 under open source — meaning the developer chose to make it free and redistributable, which is the only reason it can live on this shelf. Run and jump around tiny spherical worlds, collecting keys as the ground wraps beneath your feet. A platformer set on planets so small the floor loops back into itself. The Genesis was never designed to think in spheres, and yet here it is, doing exactly that. I find this deeply encouraging. It is native Sega Genesis / Mega Drive code — a smaller scene than Nintendo's, but home to some of homebrew's most ambitious technical work, much of it built with the open-source SGDK toolkit. Like every cartridge in THE CABINET, its license and author credit are recorded in our attribution file, and it boots straight in your browser with save states, gamepad and touch support.
HOW TO PLAY — CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS — D-pad · Z / X — action buttons · ENTER — start · SHIFT — select · gamepads are auto-detected the moment you press a button · on phones and tablets, touch controls appear automatically. Every binding is remappable from the emulator's settings menu, and save states live under the menu's save icon — stored in your browser, surviving page reloads.
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
- Is it legal to play Mini Planets online?
- Completely. Mini Planets is original homebrew for the Sega Genesis — its developer released it free under a license that permits redistribution, and the full credit is recorded in our attribution file. Nothing here is a commercial ROM.
- Can I play Mini Planets on my phone?
- Yes. Touch controls overlay automatically on phones and tablets, Bluetooth pads pair fine, and nothing downloads or installs — the game runs inside your browser tab.
- What about saving?
- Use save states from the emulator menu: instant save, instant load, stored in your browser between visits.
