The Sega Master System
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
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Sega Master SystemRetro GamingVideo Game History
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Sega Master System
Retro Gaming
Video Game History
The Sega Master System is remembered fondly by many for its great games and sound chip, with discussions highlighting its impact and longevity in various markets.
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- 01Story posted
Nov 9, 2025 at 2:15 PM EST
about 2 months ago
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Nov 9, 2025 at 3:45 PM EST
2h after posting
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Nov 10, 2025 at 9:33 PM EST
about 2 months ago
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ID: 45868259Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 3:50:08 PM
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It is also casually mentioned that the TMS9918 inspired the VDP in the Famicom/NES but I haven't seen any direct proof because it also seems possible that the 2A03 was derived from Nintendo/Ikegami Tsushinki 'Namco Galaxian' inspired arcade board design notably used in Donkey Kong. It's an interesting thread and perhaps studying Galaxian arcade hardware and Donkey Kong hardware and contrasting it with the TMS9918 and 2A03 can establish some geneology for home and arcade VDP design in the early 80's
But it is clear that there was a pretty 'open source' attitude towards hardware IP at SEGA and Nintendo and elswhere in the early 80s.
When the goal is just to put pixels on screen at the pace of the scan line, a TI part will have solved most of the nagging base issues issues and it is easy to build on. No need for a clean room design.
BTW after the deal with Nintendo fell through, Coleco next tried to get Sega to distribute the Colecovision. This deal also didn't happen, and the next year Sega released the nearly identical SG-1000. Kinda sad that they got screwed over twice.
My absolute favourite song is from Ninja Gaiden "Escape in a forest" (starts at 03:36) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFoA0OICiB4&t=207s
Someone played that song with real instruments, and it's also amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arun9KuXImk
I understand it as more of the latter than the former.
Hardware might not have been great, but they were dedicated to push it to the extreme limits of what it could do, and all of it was punching way above its weight in all respects.
Japanese companies saw an opening, and extremely brilliant people went in head first, sleeping under their desk to leave their mark in the field.
My all time favorite is the opening to Alex Kidd in Shinobi World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dx9AAKm6dI
The ironic thing is while Tectoy kept making MS games because it was cheap, those games now go for a small fortune (relatively speaking) in Europe because the were never exported out of Brazil.
I think the Master System version of Sonic Spinball came from Sega themselves though. It was sold in Europe as well as Brazil.
The translation was awful, a lot of the things in the game were cryptic, and I got ultimately got stuck at the Blue Dragon in Casba Cave. Only finished the game when I returned to it years later.
But hell if that game didn't have a lasting impact on me. The absolute sense of wonder o exploring an open world. One of the first things I did when I played was an attempt to walk around a mountain range and being obliterated by a group of spiders. I was utterly amazed when I could travel board a starship and trabel to Motavia. Exploring an entirely new world was mind blowing.
To this day when I have to pick between male and female on an RPG, I typically pick female because Alis Landale became in my mind the prototypical main character. At a time where the heroes I was used to were Rambo and Conan the Barbarian, there was something charming about going against an intergalactic dictator as a girl wieldin a sword and wearing a pink skirt. And I am a guy. Maybe that'd partly why I always get puzzled when people want to see themselves represented in videogames. I don't, I want Alis.
I am not playing the original, but a recent re-translation effort[0]. It is amazing for that "generation" of consoles.
0. https://github.com/maxim-zhao/psrp
My opinion is more nuanced now and I understand their were some outstanding titles but I remember not understanding at the time as a 8 year old kids how people could buy the NES/Famicom and tolerate its sprites flickering. I was still also playing some older DOS games in monochrome or CGA 4colors alongside the SMD yet they looked better to my eyes than those issues on the NES.
The NES was a huge improvement over the previous console, which was basically the Atari 2600, and then you had all the other gaming options like a Colecovision, C64, etc.
This video show some of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVR6YZAv58Q
[0] https://www.loja.tectoy.com.br/produto/zeenix-pro-16gb-de-ra...
On mappers: this forget about 3rd party (non-sega) mappers like Codemasters' https://www.smspower.org/Development/Mappers
On resolution: the SMS can have a higher than 192 pixels vertical resolution: https://www.smspower.org/Development/Modes ; and some (Codemasters, again) games did use that: https://www.smspower.org/Tags/Extra-Height
On ROMs checksum verification: no need to guess, this is documented depending on the BIOS: https://www.smspower.org/Development/BIOSes
Nevertheless, I loved the comparison with Famicom's hardware design.
Last but not least, don't forget about sverx's devkitSMS for writing SG-1000, SMS or GG software: https://github.com/sverx/devkitSMS
I've got a mostly-written emulator (in Rust). It's very easy to emulate, possibly the best gameplay bang for the emulator coding effort buck aside from NES. My main intent in writing this emulator is getting it running on an RP2350 board, like Adafruit Fruit Jam or Olimex RP2350pc.
It should also be possible to get the next generation (SNES, Genesis) on such hardware, but it's a much tighter fit and more effort.
He’s been doing it for over 10 years. The complete history of every game for every console. Including things you’ve likely never heard of. While things aren’t 100% in order he’s currently up to the Genesis around ‘89, before the SNES launched.
You can see the evolution of systems, how different games influenced the ones that followed, it’s just an incredible body of work.
NES? Gameboy? Atari? Microvision? Cassette Vision? Yes. And more.
Absolutely one of my favorite YouTube channels and I’m proud to be a patron.
(It has been 0 days since this comment mentioned Xevious or Heiankyo Alien)
https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyParish