Sega Master System|OT| 3D before it was cool

[IrishNinja]

i believe it was Mark Cerny that once said here in the states, the poor SMS enjoyed something like 4% market share - enough that he joked it was largely parents who bought it by accident. that might be how i'd ended up with mine, ill never know...but i'm so glad i did!

while PAL land (and Brazil & other places) were all about it, i was amazed as a kid if i met anyone else who had one. the NES had an absolute lockdown on 3rd party software (due to illegal/shitty practices, but that's another thread, yet Sega's sweartshop still tried to hold it down in arcade ports & nearly every other genre, so let's talk about some of the greats here:

• Phantasy Star - still one of the best, and yes, Yuji Naka was a goddamn wizard for those dungeons
• Rampage - now that's how you do an 8-bit arcade port
• Rastan - see above
• Zillion - early metroidvania awesomeness, and still high in my most wanted of a remake list
• Golden Axe Warrior - arguably the best Zelda clone out there, do not sleep
• Master of Darkness - speaking of clones, check this one out Castlevania fans!
• Golvellius - such an underrated action RPG, still bitter we never got the sequel
• Shinobi - more arcade port perfection
• Space Harrier - of the Suzuki classics being ported over, i still think this one captured the magic best (although OutRun was good too). the 3D one is a sight to see, on a CRT
• Gangster Town - still one of my favorite lightgun games
• Wonder Boy III: The Draogn's Trap - absolute classic, and recently re-released too!
• Dragon's Crystal - spiritual sequel to genesis' Fatal Labyrinth, check it out if you dig roguelikes!
• Alex Kidd in Miracle World - man this game took me 5 years to beat. this was it before Sonic.
• Vigilatne - fuck you, i liked it
• Spy Vs Spy - my older brother & i still don't talk because of this game. the soul still burns
• Ghostbusters - yet another it's-not-bad-but-man-is-it-better-here-than-on-the-NES

i'm leaving out a lot, but those were some of my favorites. also, this was the year i finally got my system FM sound/region modded, so coupled with my Master Everdrive, i've been able to play awesome gems like Megumi Rescue! god, i love this thing.

 

[Deleted member 1162]

Thanks Irish for the hard work

 

[André]

Not a day goes by where I don't wish the Master System Sonic games got re-released on modern platforms. They play so differently to the 16-bit versions and stand so well on their own. They deserve more recognition than they get, in my opinion.

 

[Laevateinn]

Irish is here filling up my Watched Threads page.

 

[#1 defender]

The Master System (II) was the second console i owned and the first one i bought with my own money, so many fond memories. One of my favourite games on it that i never see brought up in conversations is The Ninja. I thought it played well, it was fast paced and had great variety in level design, with each level bringing something new to the table. And the title/powerup music still hypes me up after all those years. Looking at it on youtube now i can't believe it can be beaten in 10 minutes, it felt so much longer when i was a kid. :) Is it generally considered to be a good game?

 

[Morfeo]

One of the machines i still miss a lot of games for. Love Wonderboy 3 though!

 

[ChilliConCarnage]

Click to shrink...

THIS, This was the game that plagued me for more than 20 years, my brother borrowed it once from his friend and I could never get past that 2nd level with the bouncing boulders, no matter how hard I tried, I've never got round to trying it again....

Anyway, add Castle of Illusion, Land of Illusion and Deep Duck Trouble to the list of great Master System games, I don't know why but Disney games were just so damn awesome on the MS, it's a shame they've never seen a re-release

 

[IrishNinja]

yeah, it kills me how dudes like Game Sack can breeze through the Ninja, i love it but i don't get nearly as far

 

[#1 defender]

Well, i beat The Ninja a couple of times, but on the other hand 3 games that i distinctly remember getting far in, but not being able to beat were:

- Shinobi: Damn cool game, one of the greats on the system. Sadly i didn't have my own cart and only had it borowed from a friend. I played it quite a lot and got to the final boss a few times, but could never beat him.

- Alex Kidd In Miracle World: Came with the system, another great game, but it felt really hard towards the end at the time. I got stuck on the last boss a few times and when i finally managed to beat him, i think i got confused about the sequence of the final riddle. Still, pretty cool game and it blew my mind that it came preinstalled on the system.

- Impossible Mission: Another game that i borrowed from a friend. This one was a nightmare. If i remember correctly, there were more key cards you could find than you needed, but if you didn't get the right ones to combine, you were out of luck and couldn't finish the objective. I remember thinking the game was glitched when i tried to combine the last cards and they didn't fit. XD

 

[IrishNinja]

oh my god yeah, I was on my last life and was so sweety/shaken doing that last puzzle for the crown, haha...I'd idve died there I think idve tossed the cart into the bushes

 

[ChilliConCarnage]

Talking about hard Master System games, anyone actually beat Bubble Bobble legit (all 200 levels) back in the day?

I'll always remember doing the entire game in co-op and getting to level 199 and not being allowed to progress to level 200, the final boss, because you needed to get the hidden treasures from the earlier floors (beating level 199 without the treasures just resets you to the beginning of that same level 199) obviously we never knew that so we just kept beating the level over and over and not progressing until we just gave up, another MS game I never actually beat lol

(And this is coming from someone who repeatedly beat the MS Ecco the Dolphin to completion around the same time)

 

[Laevateinn]

I think people who've beaten Bubble Bobble are liars.

 

[vinyldoom]

Master System was my first console when I was a kid, and I still have some really fond memories of it.

I remember losing hours to Casino Games, as inappropriate as that might have been for a young mind.

 

[IrishNinja]

I think people who've beaten Bubble Bobble are liars.

Click to shrink...

didn't the NES one have passwords? i know i beat that, but yeah, despite growing up with it, i've only beaten a few SMS games:

Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars
Alex Kidd in High Tech World
Alex Kidd in Shinobi World
Dynamite Dux
Gangster Town
Ghostbusters
Golvellius: Valley of Doom
Phantasy Star
Rambo III
Rampage
Vigilante
Wonder Boy
Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap

i think that's it. so many i have no intention of finishing, but i legit have a few notebook pages & printed out map to do Zillion one day

 

[HalStep]

i posted in the genesis/megadrive thread about the christmas i got that console,what i didn't mention was it came with the master system converter.i never had that many games but enduro racer will always have a special place in my heart.

ultima IV was the first rpg i ever played,i got right to the very end and translated the runes on the map (which i still have somewhere held together with sellotape) but i missed at least one of the answers to get through the final dungeon.

 

[khaz]

Best OT for the best console

 

[exo]

Not a day goes by where I don't wish the Master System Sonic games got re-released on modern platforms. They play so differently to the 16-bit versions and stand so well on their own. They deserve more recognition than they get, in my opinion.

Click to shrink...

Hear, hear. Sonic 2 on SMS has some of the best music on the console, and it's entirely unique from the original. More people need to play it.

 

[Saoshyant]

Do we have any Australian MS owners here? I got a loose cart for an expensive, late MS title (Power Strike 2), and while the PCB seems legit, the cart's plastic shell looks weird and different from what I'm used to. I wouldn't even know it was an Australian version (I bought this in Europe) if it were not for the fact it claims to have been made by Sega of Australia on the back of the shell. I really want to make sure it's the legit article, though, so any help would be much appreciated. Gonna take a couple of pics when I'm at home later.

 

[khaz]

I don't think there are moulds for Master System cartridge shells. Stoneagegamer recycle old ones and spray paint them.

 

[IrishNinja]

i had to look around, but i found a decent one for my master everdrive last year

 

[bjork]

I like the Master System, all of those Wonder Boy games are good fun and there's a pretty decent version of Fire & Ice, in addition to everything everyone else listed.

 

[Saoshyant]

Found the answer regarding my Australian copy of Power Strike II and why its shell looks so weird:

Sega Ozisoft was notorious for slashing costs with little regard for the end-user experience. As such, games from Australia tend to be noticeably cheaper to those from the rest of the worlds. The plastic cases are not of a uniform size, being slightly smaller and thinner than UK cases. Some come in an easily crushable soft plastic case. Labels were made from low quality paper stock with inferior glue.

Of course with Ozisoft, nothing was ever uniform, so you can find multiple versions of the same game with slight differences.

Ozisoft releases can be easy to distinguish based on a few telltale signs. First, the cartridges may have "Made in Australia" on the back. Secondly, the red cartridge label will have white lines instead of black lines. Some cartridges may even have a blue label with the Sega Hotline phone number, or a white background with red text. A small number of games use silver coloured plastic for the clamshell case and cartridge enclosure.

Click to shrink...

It's a non-standard shell because that's how that company rolled, apparently. PCB is legit, copy is legit, I'm happy.

Here's some pictures in case anyone was curious:

You can see the Ozisoft marker on the back, lower right corner, as well as the white lines instead of black on the sticker label, and the rough non-smooth texture on the front of the shell.

 

[Laevateinn]

Ozisoft should get the boot.

 

[Fuzzy]

 

[IrishNinja]

Click to shrink...

oh man, I've sadly passed on most of these but i want this one so bad! wonder what a physical copy + shipping will come to, or if i should wait on an amazon copy...

 

[Laevateinn]

I'm in

 

[Deleted member 1162]

triplecrossposting

got some master system jewels today =)

 

[IrishNinja]

woof, the whole wondery boy series on SMS and golvellius? youve got some of the system's best right there, congrats man!

 

[Saoshyant]

Man, this thread is dead. Well, I'm gonna post some content related with the Master System's younger portable brother, because it doesn't fit elsewhere anyway.

I just got this awesome version of the Game Gear. While it's amusing Sega would go for a massive Coca Cola promotion, releasing a system and game to do so, it's a nifty collector's item at least:

It had to be recapped before it started working again, but image and sound quality now are suberb.

 

[KDash]

I should recap my Game Gear. The picture and sound is all messed up.

Anyway, I thought I had already posted in here since I had the thread on my watch list, but I guess I forgot to. Here's my small Master System collection. My console has Hang-On and Safari Hunt built-in, though I've never been able to play the latter as I don't own a Light Phaser yet. The loose copy of Wonder Boy came with the system when I bought it at a flea market like 8-9 years ago.

 

[Laevateinn]

That is one sexy game gear

 

[Tackleberry]

Always loved the Master System. The games looked sooooo much better than the NES ones. Better colors, better graphics overall.

I found myself playing that more than the NES when I was younger. Rampage always sucked me in.

 

[Saoshyant]

That is one sexy game gear

Click to shrink...

Damn right. And the pack-in game isn't half bad either.

 

[Tailzo]

I finished Sonic the hedgehog 8 bit for the first time right now, or the pc port of it.

So fun.

 

[lupin23rd]

That is indeed a cool Game Gear.
There was one of that same Coca Cola one on yahoo auctions a few weeks ago that had all the fixings on it - IPS screen, recaps, a few other mods, that would have been interesting.
For some reason this year my descent into retro game collecting madness has led me to collect a bunch of Game Gear games (maybe will post a pic later). My only previous experience with the system was in elementary school when a kid I knew sold his SNES with games (at least one Final Fantasy game) so he could buy a Game Gear with Mortal Kombat "for the blood" and I laughed.