The Official Sega Master System Thread

[NinjaWarrior]

I seen a thread about it, But wasn't too active , via the Wiki

 

What is everyone's Fav Game on the System that couldn't knock the NES off?

 

I love Shooter, Even know I'm not that Good at it..Power Strike is one of them

 

Also some Game Gear to Master System Conversions

 

Quote

The Master System[c] is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console manufactured and developed by Sega. It was originally a remodeled export version of the Sega Mark III, the third iteration of the SG-1000 series of consoles, which was released in Japan in 1985 with graphical capabilities improved over its predecessors. The Master System launched in North America in 1986, followed by Europe in 1987, and then in Brazil and Korea in 1989. A Japanese version of the Master System was also launched in 1987, which features a few enhancements over the export models (and by proxy the original Mark III): a built-in FM audio chip, a rapid-fire switch, and a dedicated port for the 3D glasses. The Master System II, a cheaper model, was released in 1990 in North America, Australasia and Europe.

The original Master System models use both cartridges and a credit card-sized format known as Sega Cards. Accessories include a light gun and 3D glasses that work with specially designed games. The later Master System II redesign removed the card slot, turning it into a strictly cartridge-only system, and is incompatible with the 3D glasses.

The Master System was released in competition with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Its library is smaller and with fewer well-reviewed games than the NES, due in part to Nintendo licensing policies requiring platform exclusivity. Though the Master System had newer, improved hardware, it failed to overturn Nintendo's significant market share advantage in Japan and North America. However, it attained significantly greater success in other markets, including Europe, Brazil, South Korea and Australia.

The Sega Master System is estimated to have sold between 10 and 13 million units worldwide. In addition, Tectoy has sold 8 million licensed Master System variants in Brazil. Retrospective criticism has recognized its role in the development of the Sega Genesis, and a number of well-received games, particularly in PAL (including PAL-M) regions, but is critical of its limited library in the NTSC regions, which were dominated by the NES.

 

[roots.genoa]

I recently purchased Submarine Attack that was mentioned on AA (in the Game Gear topic I guess, since it tends to make for the Master System one), and I'm currently eyeing a copy of Alex Kidd in Shinobi World that's not too expensive. I have a soft spot for the SMS since it was my first console (not my first video game system though, but the ST belonged to my brother), but I try to remain objective since it clearly didn't get as many great games as the NES. It still got quite a few gems, some of them being exclusive (or only available on the Game Gear).

[Lord Innit]

Wonder Boy.  

In the meantime, Master Higgins can burn......

[Tanooki]

Honestly for me there were a handful of games that kept me coming back around to it over a period of 20ish years, twice owning the hardware too.  It was going lean due to time and other stuff I iced it out, outside of having the ROM support off the GG (and Gen) everdrives.

 

In no real particular order though would be stuff I actually owned like Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, Aerial Assault, its port of Ys, Ghouls n Ghosts, Phantasy Star, both downgrades of the duos of Sonic1+2 and Streets of Rage 1+2, Golden Axe Warrior, and Wonderboy III

[homerj]

I didn’t have a huge collection when i originally owned a Master System in the late 80’s. I was only able to get games for my birthday & Christmas.  I might have had 10 games until somebody broke into our house & stole it while we were on vacation.  That said, i probably played Shinobi far more than anything else.  

[Lord Innit]

Of all the SMS games I've own, the ones that I still keep going back to are all four of the Wonder Boy games, Spy Vs Spy, Power Strike, Master of Darkness, Secret Command and Choplifter. 

[NinjaWarrior]

I ment Power Strike II, not the Original

 

2 Sites I got on Most 

 

SMS Power & Sega 8bit

 

I just Love the Master System Controller, Even know it's only useful on Master System, Atari 2600 & 7800 (Only 1 Button)

 

I like this Mod

 

 

[roots.genoa]

I wanted the Master System for Shinobi but initially I would only get budget $15 games once per trimester, and most of them sucked except Secret Command. Then I got Golden Axe I loved even though that port gets criticized a lot (and I can see why, but I don't care). I also loved Cyber Shinobi because while being clunky, it has great music and is easy to beat contrary to Shinobi (I could never get past Mandara). Indiana Jones is also nice compared to the other versions imho. My favorite games were probably Castle of Illusion and Asterix though. I also liked Dragon's Trap very much but never owned it, I borrowed it from a friend. In the recent years I got games like Danan, Kenseiden, Psycho Fox, and Land of Illusion to play on my Mega Sg, but I didn't have much time to play them unfortunately. I was able to beat one of them, but because I got the ROM and played it on the Pocket with savestates. 😅

[SlidellMan]

The first Master System game I played was a port of Hang-On long ago. (I'm talking about early '90s.) When I discovered FreezeSMS (Anyone remember that Emulator), I decided to start playing the likes of Alex Kidd, Shinobi, Wonder Boy, Kenseiden, and Phantasy Star. Hell, I'll be honest by saying that the FM unit gave many games for it a shot in the arm.

[NinjaWarrior]

I remember buying Either Street Fighter II or Sonic Blast from Brazil before I knew I can buy Games Online, Took over a Month

 

[Tanooki]

Ooooh I forgot one, (Vampire on GG) Master of Darkness is fantastic, the Castlevania of Sega.  That game is quite quality for what it is and all that.  I didn't want to flood my other list, but the SMS totally since it was them really nailed it when it came to Sega arcade conversions as much as the SMS could (and GG) handle.  I tried to stick to more unique stuff, but SMS was never wanting for quality titles despite the Nintendo grip on the market of the era if you were into Sega titles, you were well fed still.

 

It was also a boon that it wasn't region locked even with PAL oddly, so you could get stuff like the Sonic 2 I had, or the re-stickered Golden Axe Warrior (Strider, SPiderman, etc.) too.  Brazil has some gems as well which were more GG conversions that did nice on the home TV.

[Hakogame 箱亀]

Here's a list of some of my personal fav's: 

Castle of Illusion

Sagaia

Forgotten Worlds

Y's

Road Rash

Wonderboy 3

Bubble Bobble

Asterix

Asterix and the great rescue

Rtype

Fantasy Zone 2

Phantasy Star.

[SlidellMan]

The Master System version of Wonder Boy in Monster World is underrated, and I admit that its PSG rendition of the music held up:

 

[Austin]

On 3/29/2024 at 7:49 AM, Lord Innit said:

Wonder Boy.  

In the meantime, Master Higgins can burn......

Gotta give Higgins credit. He was in more Wonder Boy 1 style games than even Wonder Boy himself. 🤣

 

(I always preferred the arcade formula of the first game, so I have always loved the Adventure Island series.)

[+-^CrossBow^-]

On 3/29/2024 at 3:57 PM, NinjaWarrior said:

I ment Power Strike II, not the Original

 

2 Sites I got on Most 

 

SMS Power & Sega 8bit

 

I just Love the Master System Controller, Even know it's only useful on Master System, Atari 2600 & 7800 (Only 1 Button)

 

I like this Mod

Nearly the same mods I have in mine. Only I didn't have an OR gate IC at the time I did my pause modification so I used an AND gate IC and just ran the outputs to a few more gates to get it to work. I recently removed the RF modulator on mine to fit in a new RGB kit that greatly improves on the original RGB output and provides a much cleaner overall output. I still have the original AV jack and it still works, but the new 9-pin I installed just provides much better results for RGB in this case. Mine has been a work in progress for well over a decade with different things installed into it over the years. But I think it is good to go now at this point.

 

The FM board is really nice upgrade and I was surprised by how many US released games actually have the FM music still on them! I have an older FM board from when Tim was still able to source actual YM IC chips, but now he uses a clone and the board is laid out differently.

 

Here is my hand made pause mod circuit on perf board that I did many years ago. It can only handle the pause request from port 1, but I've thought about replacing this out with one of the new premade boards I got from Consoles Unleashed recently that can allow the pause to be done from either controller port.

 

I originally also had a handmade s-video circuit installed. But then changed it out for one of these nice looking kits from Console5 that I installed. Still didn't get rid of the jail bars that the SMS consoles suffer from, but that is why I added in the next part more recently at the end of last year.

 

The last and most recent upgrade also came from Consoles Unleashed. They have a really nice active amp RGB kit for the SMS. Their kit is designed for use in the model 2, but I was able to adapt it to work on my model 1 without too much issue. Just had to poke around and find the right places to attach everything.

 

The rear of my SMS has a lot going on. Originally I only had the means to use composite and s-video. And I didn't like using the standard cables so I added in the s-video port along with additional RCAs that have the audio and composite broken out to them also. The original RF modulator was removed as part of the new RGB kit and as you can see, I installed a new 9-pin mini din in its place to provide the RGB + Audio along with another composite signal to this new port. The original AV port is still connected and technically still works using the onboard stock video output circuits.

 

At this point in time, if I were to do this all over again, I would simply forgo the s-video and RCA jacks now that I have the means to use the RGB and would just stick with using the 9pin mini. I would also install the region toggle switch where the channel select switch used to be from the modulator. I didn't here, because I still had the RF in place when I did the FM expansion and the region switch. So a hole was drilled and the switch installed on the opposite corner on the back of the console that isn't shown here as I've never taken pics of it it seems?

 

 

[Yakumo1975]

Some nice MS mods there. 

I have a Japanese MS myself which uses a different sized cartridge slot.  I had to custom make an Everdrive adapter to use Everdrive on it as there was no Japanese varient at the time and maybe still is not. 

[+jeremiahjt]

On 3/31/2024 at 9:51 PM, SlidellMan said:

The Master System version of Wonder Boy in Monster World is underrated, and I admit that its PSG rendition of the music held up:

 

I never played this one, but I do really enjoy the first three Wonder Boy games.

[r_chase]

You know the funniest thing is: SMS, GG, and even the Nintendo GameBoy all had a similar Z80 chipset one way or another. I find it fascinating since I'm trying to port small browser games to the Master System. ❤️

[SlidellMan]

One thing I noticed with both Golden Axe Warrior and Phantasy Star: both games have separate sprites for facing right and left. I always appreciate that kind of detailing, even if it eats away at ROM space.

[robotwo]

On 4/12/2024 at 2:11 AM, r_chase said:

You know the funniest thing is: SMS, GG, and even the Nintendo GameBoy all had a similar Z80 chipset one way or another. I find it fascinating since I'm trying to port small browser games to the Master System. ❤️

The GG and SMS are definitely similar chipsets as the differences pretty much only boils down to some minor VDP changes such as having a 12-bit vs 6-bit RGB palette and a smaller viewport.
The GameBoy chipset on the other hand differs pretty significantly, looking only at the CPU parts it lacks a significant amount of the Z80 opcodes, adds a bunch of new ones and memory maps all of its I/O instead.
I'd say knowing some Z80 will definitely give you a solid starting point for tackling GameBoy development though.

What game are you trying to port to the SMS btw?

[r_chase]

1 hour ago, robotwo said:

The GG and SMS are definitely similar chipsets as the differences pretty much only boils down to some minor VDP changes such as having a 12-bit vs 6-bit RGB palette and a smaller viewport.
The GameBoy chipset on the other hand differs pretty significantly, looking only at the CPU parts it lacks a significant amount of the Z80 opcodes, adds a bunch of new ones and memory maps all of its I/O instead.
I'd say knowing some Z80 will definitely give you a solid starting point for tackling GameBoy development though.

What game are you trying to port to the SMS btw?

That's just it: I don't have a game to port. I was hoping to use Pocket Platformer to make the game beforehand...and then use this WIP tool by @haroldoop to port it to the SMS.

[BassGuitari]

On 3/28/2024 at 11:53 PM, NinjaWarrior said:

What is everyone's Fav Game on the System that couldn't knock the NES off?

 

I love Shooter, Even know I'm not that Good at it..Power Strike is one of them

It's tough for me to pick a favorite. My favorite games are all basically good but have something that holds them back, so there isn't much that (in aggregate) really stands out from the rest.

 

Golden Axe Warrior - Pound for pound, the best Master System game I've played. (And the best 8-bit Zelda game?...*hides*) But weirdly, not one of my go-tos; I'm just not much of an RPG guy.

Double Dragon - This one probably qualifies as a favorite, being one of my most-played SMS games.

Alex Kidd In Shinobi World - Good, but disappointingly short, and easy once you've played through it once or twice. I still prefer it to Shinobi, though. (My copy is a repro.)

Power Strike - Impressive, but punishingly difficult. To be fair, the only Aleste game I can play worth a damn is Space Megaforce for SNES. (This is also a repro.)

Black Belt - Like Kung Fu/Master, but with more personality and exploding enemies and bosses. Thumbs up! Gets a little tedious, though.

Space Harrier - I want to like this more than I actually do; it plays well enough but the graphics and scaling are rough to the point of distraction; bosses look like the game crashed.

Alien Syndrome - I like this one, but it's really squirrelly to play with the standard D-Square controller; the Sega Control Stick isn't a lot better.

The Ninja - A nifty run-'n'-gun but gives off serious "budget" vibes, like a Sega Card game that's too big for the format...which makes sense since it was adapted from an SG-1000 MyCard title.

Rambo - It's good, and the pace is just slow enough that it doesn't seem like it should be difficult, and yet I am garbage at this game. I love that Player 2 looks like Yaphet Kotto in Alien.

R-Type - Am I crazy, or is R-Type overrated? I don't even mean just the Master System version (although, yes, also the Master System version). It's just alright to me.

 

Recent pickups include Kenseiden, Time Soldiers, and Ghost House. I look forward to giving those a spin!

[NinjaWarrior]

Can't wait for Castlevania & TMNT The Arcade Game

 

[M-S]

I can see why Nintendo didn't want third parties to make games for the Master System, if games like these were released back then the entire history could have played differently.

Edited April 22 by M-S

[SlidellMan]

I'd love to make homebrew games for the Sega Master System.