Gamespot disses the Master System

[Cheese007]

http://boards.sega.com/sega/viewtopic.php?t=59756

Wow is it just me or is Gamespot completely and utterly retarded?

[n8littlefield]

Hard to say. If you look at it strictly from a U.S. standpoint, the Master System really flopped hard. And truthfully, after playing many of the games emulated, it's easy to see why - the NES really did have better games overall and a much larger variety. On the one hand, it's foolish for Gamespot to be SO anti-SMS, but I can see why they might not be gungho to give it it's own article.

[Vic George 2K3]

Also Nintendo's third-party licensing system at the time of the NES was choking the life out of its competitor, leaving the system with very few cross-ports in the US market.

[Tan]

no doubt one of the many reasons sites like gamespot have such a bad reputation for journalism

[Atarifever]

Hard to say. If you look at it strictly from a U.S. standpoint, the Master System really flopped hard. And truthfully, after playing many of the games emulated, it's easy to see why - the NES really did have better games overall and a much larger variety. On the one hand, it's foolish for Gamespot to be SO anti-SMS, but I can see why they might not be gungho to give it it's own article.

Well, anything with the Alex the Kid games, the original Phantasy Star, and Shinobi, as well as great games like Psycho Fox, Zillion, and Rambo is surely deserving of a little article isn't it? I mean, I'd think having the first Shinobi console game and the first Phantasy Star alone would be enough to net it a flashback feature. That's ignoring the fact that it owns the NES zapper.

[8th lutz]

What you do expect. Some of these websites hire gamefaqs forum members as reviewers. Some of those members got reviewing jobs at sites like ign despite making reviews for games or systems that person never played or owned on gamefaqs. Those type of people only look at old game systems are mainstream from that era.

 

The sms was not a mainstream system and gamespot did post back to a member of their forums and said" just kidding".

 

The sms was good system. Their thinking is great sales is great games is crap. Games for that sold very well not always are good games like pac-man 2600, et, superman 64, and the Ljnnes games.

 

The sms had good games like phantasy star, wonder boy series, fanasy zone 1&2 to name a few.

 

Gamespot was only looked at it from the us standpoint and japan. Now days what nintendo of america did with puting restrictions on 3rd parties from going to a system not made by them wouldn't be put with.

[bedouin]

Anyone with a sizable SMS collection would know it *does* hold a candle to the NES. The library wasn't as huge, but there weren't as many duds in it either.

[Spector]

Remember that over in Europe, the NEs was the outsider and SMS was much bigger. The Master System had better graphics too. The colours were always brighter.

[Dusk2600]

that guy is a joke, soneone should take his keyboard away so he can not type stupidity like that and post it on the net

[davepesc]

Urge to kill... rising

 

I know it wasn't nearly as popular as the NES, but come on:

Alex Kidd

Phantasy Star

R-frickin-Type

Shinobi

Fantasy Zone II

Zillion II

Gangster Town

Golden Axe Warrior

WonderBoy III

Great ports like Outrun, Space Harrier, Afterburner, Rastan, Golden Axe, ThunderBlade and Rampage.

 

Heck, I even loved Reggie Jackson Baseball, Walter Payton Football, Great Golf and Great Volleyball.

 

SMS was a nice system. It had fewer games, but most of them were quality.

[Inky]

Between Zillion, Phantasy Star, and Fantasy Zone (and yes, I liked Double Dragon on it), I was fairly inseperable from my SMS...

 

BUt when one doesn't have money to pay rent, something has to go,

 

Mistakes that were made 15years ago.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Hard to say. If you look at it strictly from a U.S. standpoint, the Master System really flopped hard. And truthfully, after playing many of the games emulated, it's easy to see why - the NES really did have better games overall and a much larger variety. On the one hand, it's foolish for Gamespot to be SO anti-SMS, but I can see why they might not be gungho to give it it's own article.

Except a lot of those "better" games probably happened after the SMS was in decline. Having seen the technical info on them, the SMS would definitely be easier to program.

 

What killed the SMS (slowly) in the US was that 1) the NES came out first, and 2) the unfair "exclusive" requirements of Nintendo that ensured they wouldn't be able to catch up. I don't think the Tonka deal helped it much either. Fortunately, Sega came out with the Genesis and did well enough against the SNES when that came out.

[kisrael]

I remember biggish arguments about the relative merits of Double Dragon on SMS vs NES...

[BydoEmpire]

I love the SMS. Great arcade ports. Great quirky and original titles - Penguin Land, Alex Kidd, Phantasy Star, etc. I can't be the ONLY fan of Ghost House! Yeah, it didn't have the depth of the NES library, but there were still a lot of great games, and that's all you can ask for.

[darklord1977]

the sms is a good system. with some great titles such as zaxxon 3d some people hate this systerm some dont, it all depends on what you like. i had nes before i got the sms and i find that the arcade ports on the sega are still addicting today.. sure, nintendo had more original games etc..but sega had more arcade classics, and the master system never had that blinking problem that the nes was famous for

Edited April 18, 2006 by darklord1977

[2600Lives]

Right after I moved out on my own, my first real job was at a pawn shop. While doing some much-needed cleaning of the cabinets in the back, I stumbled across a box of SMS games and a Power Base Converter. This box was STUFFED with games, probably about 50 or so. I asked the manager how much he wanted for it, and he told me that I could have the whole thing for 20 bucks even. So, that night, I rummaged through it. About 10 or so of the games were doubles, mostly of the sports titles, but there, in the bottom in a case with no insert...was Phantasy Star. I spent the entire winter that year plugging through that game. Was it ever difficult! The internet wasn't something I even knew about at the time, so there was no help available, either. I got through it, though. There were other great SMS games in that box, too. Golvellius, Lord Of The Sword, Spellcaster, Psycho Fox (a personal favorite), but nothing can compare to that first winter living on my own trying to find my way through those ultra-cool hand drawn 3D dungeons.

 

All hail the SMS!

[Foxsolo2000]

The MS was the first system I bought after the game crash of 84. It reawoke my love of video gaming and although I did get a NES later on the MS was still my firm favourite until I could afford the Mega Drive and even then I bought the converter so I could continue to play my MS library on it

[BydoEmpire]

I spent the entire winter that year plugging through that game. Was it ever difficult! The internet wasn't something I even knew about at the time, so there was no help available, either. I got through it, though. There were other great SMS games in that box, too. Golvellius, Lord Of The Sword, Spellcaster, Psycho Fox (a personal favorite), but nothing can compare to that first winter living on my own trying to find my way through those ultra-cool hand drawn 3D dungeons.

I played a bit of Phantasy Star back in the day, but never finished it - my friend had it so I could only borrow it occasionally. But I got the GBA PS collection when it came out, and it provided one of those 'wow' gaming moments. I was in the laundromat waiting for my clothes, playing Phantasy Star on the gba. I had gone deep into some dungeon - one fairly early on with lots of pits that would drop you to a lower level. After I found what i was looking for I spend a good half an hour wandering about, trying to find my way out, all the while slowly losing precious HP in random battles. I started crudely mapping it out on a day planner. Another 20-30 minutes later, down to about three hit points with Alis and maybe Odin, one random attack away from losing all my hard-earned progress I saw the exit. With sweat running down my face and a day-planner full of scribbly lines on my lap I made a run for it, got out, and saved. It was joyous. I did finish the game this time (sadly with the help of the net). After all those years, the game held up surprisingly well, imho. In fact, I would say SMS games in general have aged pretty well.

Edited April 19, 2006 by BydoEmpire

[kisrael]

Right after I moved out on my own, my first real job was at a pawn shop.

How do Pawn Shops make money? Is it more on the fee people pay getting their own stuff out, on selling the stuff that people don't claim, or are they fronts for other operations? It seems like they'd tend to build up a lot of not-too-sellable inventory...

[2600Lives]

Oh, it's definately through the interest that people pay to redeem their stuff. Lemme show you how it works.

 

A person comes in with a game they want to pawn. You always ask if they want to sell it outright, or just get a loan so then can get it back later. If they want to sell it, you might offer a little more than what you would pawn it for, since you can get it to the floor for sale quicker. All items sold to a pawn shop MUST be held for a minimum of 10 days before they can go out for sale, and I believe that differes from state to state. Ok, so you loan them 5 dollars on this game. It will cost them 6 to get it back out within a month's time. That's pretty much the interest rate, a dollar on every five until you hit the 200 dollar mark, then it begins a slow decline. IF they pick up the item within the first month, it's only the 6 dollars to get it back (even if they get it back that same day), BUT, if they go over that period of time, the interest begins to build up. Most shops offer 60 days of grace to get your stuff back out, so by the end of the entire 90 days, it would be 8 dollars to get back out. The interest would build at a dollar a month, so if someone had a 100 dollar loan, and it was 120 to get back out, they'd owe a total of 160 dollars at the end of the 90 days. After the entire loan has expired, the stuff goes out for sale. Pricing can be VERY subjective. Typically, you loan half of what YOU would sell it for, not what it's worth. So, if we were selling games at 10 dollars each, we'd loan 5, and there would be a total of 8 dollars of the shops money invested in the item when it hits the floor for sale, so you'd only make 2 dollars. Sell a lot of games, though, and you make some nice profit. Remember when you try to talk the guys down on games and stuff that they likely aren't making but a couple of dollars on them, so don't get upset when they won't budge price wise. Other items were different, usually. I personally loaned a guy 75 thousand dollars on a platinum and diamond Rolex watch, the most beautiful I've ever seen in my life. He needed cash and didn't have any liquid funds at the time. We priced the thing at over 200 thousand, by calling Rolex themselves, and we would have sold it for around 150 thousand or so. Pawn shops make lots of money, believe you me. Now most of them do things called payday loans, which is another matter alltogether.

[Crazy Climber]

I cant remember where I saw it but someone has to know this. I recently read about a portable T.V. or maybe it was a DVD player that is going to have 10 or 15 SMS titles built into it. It didnt say which games but it sounded cool. I think it was in a magazine like Stuff or Maxim, anybody know this or hear of it?

[BydoEmpire]

I saw something online about a portable device like a cell phone that had a bunch of Sega 8-bit games built-in. I *think* it was a cell phone, but I could be wrong, and I don't recall if it was SMS or GG games. Can't remember where I got the link - probably the Digital Press forums. Hm, I have a surprisingly bad memory for a Sega 8-bit-related product. Years ago, some company out of Hong Kong was selling a region-free DVD player with "100s" of SMS games included and playable on the system. It was pretty tempting, but I didn't really trust the no-name company to ship me a working product. And, of course, it was a bunch of roms on a cd that the DVD player could play