The Final Days of the Sega Master System

In July 1983, Sega released its first dedicated home console in Japan, the sg-1000. It was based on the popular z80 processor and used graphics and sound chips created by Texas Instruments. Sega intended to make a big splash in the home consumer market. so they also created a home computer based on the sg-1000 called sc3000, in addition to educational and productivity software, it also played the same games as their console,

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's little brother, the first year on the market had been productive, they sold more sg-1000 who had predicted and created more games than their number one competitor, Nintendo.

Big changes had also hit Sega around the same time under new ownership. Csk Corporation had purchased Sega from Gulf and Western and the new management firmly believed that the future of home consoles was going to change. be big Sega doubled down and released the sg-1002 in July 1984. It had some quality of life improvements, such as detachable controllers that could be stored on the

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itself. Things that began to go very badly for Sega the following year. Nintendo had regained incredible steam in retail easily surpassing Sega's efforts with the SG-1000 market in sharp decline, Sega had felt they were losing out because they didn't have enough power and looking to change things up, they reinforced the core technology of the SG-1000. 1000 giving it a radically improved set of graphics and sound chips and released a new console called the Sega Mark 3 in October 1985.

This machine would be released in the United States the following year as the Sega Master System. In this episode we will see how things went with this device. in America, some of the games he received during his lifetime, and ultimately how it all ended. I hope you enjoy the last

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of the Sega Master System. The first years of Master System were very promising. In the United States, in 1986 we obtained. Great games like the shoot em up shoplifter, a version of Sega's arcade game that was a remake of the classic home computer release, the side-scrolling action and one-on-one black belt fighting came out that same year, a westernized version from Japanese.

Hakuto no Kin Fist of the North Star, the ever-popular Alex Kid in Miracle World, also made its debut, and while I didn't like it much, there are Master System fans who swear by its gameplay variety and challenge the classic run-and-gun action. shoot. of Ninjas appeared at the end of the year, as did the movie license Rambo First Blood Part 2. 1987 kept the ball rolling, Space Eagle featured a sprite-scaled arcade shooter adaptation that was better than what it was. had a right to be the Flies and Guns co-op quartet got a

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port and didn't have the four-player arcade, but it was as faithful as could have been expected.

Wonder Boy was another arcade port that was surprisingly good and almost nailed the gameplay. one to one sprite scaling legend outrun also made its home debut on the

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system that year, and while it wasn't exactly the same visually, it was still a really fun game. Sega released millions at the end of that year, which was sort of their version of metroid. was created to tie in with the anime series in Japan, which unfortunately never made it to the United States, as fun as some of those games. It was in 1988 that the master system really hit its stride.

Zaxxon got a release for 3D glasses and it was nothing short of phenomenal, it made owning those things worth it in itself. Space here, your 3D appeared soon after, giving you something else to play in 3D, after the side-scrolling action adventure where the high opto samurai fights to recover the scrolls of his ancestors, the epic shinobi ninja game also appeared That year, this was one of the platform's defining games, and while the port differed quite a bit from its arcade cousin, it was still nothing short of incredible, the RPG fantasy star released shortly after giving Master System owners a extensive and engaging story of a planet locked in civil war and your efforts to overthrow its mad king.

The end of the year was an exciting ride of high-profile releases. You got an arcade port of the beat'em up double dragon, as well as a port of the excellent shoot em up r-type with nes clearly in the lead in controlling the North American market, Sega redoubled its efforts in releasing games to keep the platform relevant in 1989, the cooperative kaiju simulator rampage hit home earlier that year and surpassed the NES version in every way. Reggie Jackson's Baseball was Sega's second generation baseball title, which was one of my favorites. It was so good. Sega basically remade it for their 16-bit Genesis shortly after.

I had played before, it took a little getting used to, but there was a really good story and great exploration. Taito's arcade masterpiece Roston appeared there and did a wonderful job of capturing the feel of that game's world. It was challenging and felt like a The video game version of Conan the Barbarian came to an end in 1989. Sega prepared to replace the master system with its new Genesis platform. A 16-bit machine loosely based on their popular system. 16. Nintendo had completely dominated the Master System at retail and it was time to try something new, but Sega wasn't done trying to bring the Master System into people's homes.

Popular toy maker Tonka had had control of Master System distribution for years and Sega retook that control and completely relaunched the brand with a new value proposition, while Genesis would remain its primary platform, Master System would become its lowest priced entry level brand. 1990 would see a redesign and a major price drop and Sega would prepare a new batch of games to sell with their increase. Your Serious Air Assault was a horizontal shooter that was pretty decent. There are a lot of different power-ups to improve the graphics. It has some nice backgrounds and there are some really cool bosses.

Its main problem is that the stages are too long, which generates some fatigue. with the same enemy patterns dominating your playtime, if they had added just a few more cutscenes and a few new enemies to spice things up this could have been a classic but it's not bad as Sega was trying like hell to milk. Mike Tyson's defeat, so they renamed the heavyweight champion James Buster Douglas knockout boxing in 1990. Some people liked this one, but I couldn't stand it. The tedious back and forth of the fights never feels like you have any real control and the punches seem to land completely at random despite being right in the other boxer's face the whole time it looks good but I couldn't find much to enjoy here the genesis version was also shallow but at least your punches had some weight Sega developed a strong relationship with was the king of pop in those

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so it made sense that the master system would have a version of Moonwalker.

It also turned out to be pretty good, it follows much of the design of the Genesis game and despite being scaled down, it still looks in place. Faithfully, even the music was catchy. This was one of those moments where you really had to give Sega credit for bringing it so close to the 16-bit version. If you ever get the chance, it's really worth playing, believe it or not. Tiertex gave us, an incredibly solid port of Paperboy that year, next to the arcade you simply had to be impressed, the color was great, the scrolling was smooth and the gameplay was perfect at a time when most Arcade ports were butchered on 8-bit machines, the master system. stood out with excellent results.

Did you enjoy rc pro-am on nes? If you gave rc grand prix a try on the master system it's essentially the same game, you get an elevated racer where you can earn money to upgrade your tracks and get more. Complex as you play and there are a lot of them, it's not particularly deep or plays well, but it's fun for a few turns here and there. Sega released another hockey game for the master system in 1990 called slap shot, it's kind of bumper cars. feeling the sport, everyone bounces off each other as you fight for the puck, it doesn't play too bad and the graphics are nice and colorful, two players can be fun and it has a tournament mode for long play, not bad but there are better ones.

The Dead Angle 8-bit hockey games were an interesting take on the arcade game of the same name. It's kind of like Dynamite Duke, but set in the 1930s. You control both the crosshairs and the silhouette of your character as you move around the screen. You must kill everyone. the bad guys before a ball appears the movement is very choppy and the life bar is completely misleading looks like you can take a lot of hits when you actually fall down after a few not a big fan of this one personally it's very choppy from the source and it's just not very fun to play oh man, Sega had a lot of work to import Golden Ax to the master system.

It uses the same four megabits as the genesis version, but gets plenty of cuts as you can. Just play Zack's Battler and it's single player only. If you only had a master system, you'd probably have a little fun, but Genesis owners had a lot of laughs at this game's expense. I wasn't a fan of Alex Kidd, but Sega won me over with Alex from the 90s. Kidd in the shinobi world, this one had excellent gameplay and the level design was really fun, it also looked and sounded good if the other games by Alex Kidd had been so good from the start, there may not have been a need for a quick blue replacement years later.

Of the system's best games, you'd think Columns would be simply forgettable on the master system, but it's actually not bad at all. The flash columns are here and you can change the puzzle pieces and it sounds cool too, not a bad version instead of trying. to port the genesis version, eswat on the master system was inspired by the arcade game, fight your way through various locations with a cybernetic suit that comes off as you take damage, takes too much on your toast, is fast difficult and could have been really great. If enemies didn't constantly spawn behind you, it would quickly get boring fighting things from the direction you just came from.

I will tell you a little known fact. I really don't like racing games with permanently split screens, even in single player. The Super Monaco GP mode on the master system is guilty of this and it really hurts. The gameplay is also a bit suspect. The automatic transmission mode is nice and unplayable because you can't downshift quickly enough for tight corners. This means you have to do it. Play it in manual mode, which is an automatic throttle control scheme that makes shifting gears your only way to slow down. I also didn't care much about making this play better on the Genesis 1990 which ended up with an 8-bit Joe Montana version.

Football Sega clearly took inspiration from tick mobile's gameplay in this one, but it fails in several areas. There is no league license, there is no player license. The gameplay is slower and the music is not as catchy. Not a bad 8 bit. football game, but there are certainly better ones, it had the building blocks of something special, but the

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product just fell on its face. The beginning of 1991 came with the sobering reality that even with a price drop on new software, the Master System was simply not going to be successful in the US market, the Super Nintendo was about to be released, so Sega closed any attempts to push the master system hardware and software.

There were seven games scheduled to be released when this decision was made, so Sega concluded its development and completely shut down North American distribution. These were the

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games for the Dick Tracy platform. It was an interesting movie license on the master system. They tried to copy the game. Genesis version almost stage by stage and with very similar gameplay, although there are some differences in the details and size of the sprites, it even copied the images quite faithfully. It would have also been a good game if it hadn't been for the gameplay that requires you to tap the attack button to shoot from side to side and hold the attack button to shoot in the background.

It made things awkward and imprecise, making it much more frustrating than it should have been, so Sega continued using their Genesis licenses for the master system with ghouls and ghosts. You'd never think an 8-bit machine from 1985 would have any chance of doing it. this game is fair and you would be right, although what is here is playable, it has dropped considerably in all categories, the game is plagued with constant slowdowns and makes an already difficult game almost impossible. I admire the attempt, but it plays better. elsewhere now this is the kind of thing that sells hardware Castle of Illusion was a greataddition to the master system library.

An incredible experience from top to bottom. It looked good and played even better. The level design left most platformers in the dust and although it was short. It was a great ride to the end, a must for fans of this type of game. Tiertex developed the Master System Strider and oh man, they slaughtered it, gave it an ax and wouldn't let it go. Five levels is a horrible mess of bad gameplay and terrible sound and visuals, things like this didn't help the machine's fortunes at all. Sega wanted a game that looked and played like Zelda and it came in the form of a golden axe-wielding warrior played from above.

For perspective, you venture far and wide searching for dungeon items and the nine lost crystals to defeat the death viper. It looks and plays great and is as good as its inspiration. There weren't a ton of action-adventure games on the platform, so this one was plenty. The welcome surprise: Sega had the Spider-Man license for a while and made a few different games with it. The main version of the system actually wasn't a bad game, it just had some frustrating elements that held it back from greatness when moving around the screen. a good net swing was easy and wall climbing was natural, problems arose when attacking enemies, your hits had no animation or real weight so it was difficult to get a feel for the moment, it was also very cheap in the Later game, things would fall from the ceiling, float from the ground and enemies would come at you from left to right if the balance had been better thought out and the hitbox more refined, this could have been a killer license, instead it's Well and a real missed opportunity, the final game released in the US was none other than Sonic, while you'd think Sega would have simply adapted the Genesis game as closely as possible, instead they handed the title over to Ancient , who developed a completely different game in the end.

The result was not bad and its own experience, the level design from top to bottom is radically different, as are the bonus stages and the way to collect the chaos emeralds. The bonus stages here are for continuities and extra lives and the chaos emeralds are actually found during certain stages. Much more challenging than the 16-bit version, which again gives it quite a different feel. Performance suffers here regularly with almost constant bouts of slowdown in certain areas. It's a black mark on an otherwise fun adventure. The closure of the master system in the United States in 1991, of course, was not the end of the history of that system, it continued for another four years in Europe and even longer in Brazil, there is no getting around the fact that the platform was massacred in North America, however, only 114 games were officially released. had about a third of the system's actual library, even with Sega's reboot and new marketing campaign in 1990, it still sold poorly and was quickly relegated to the bargain bin.

In fact, Sega was so eager to close the North American market the following year that the last four US releases were just European versions with a new UPC label on the back of the box, while the master system had a series of excellent titles, the popularity of the NES was too much to overcome. Nintendo also signed exclusivity contracts that prevented many of the games developed for their hardware from being ported elsewhere, greatly limiting third-party support, most of the things you saw here were published by follow for that very reason. and that is the story of how things were for the master system in North America until its end. days, a technologically sound piece of hardware hamstrung by a lack of third-party support and Nintendo's monopoly, I have to give it to Sega for putting up with it for so long, yet even though they got their asses handed to them at retail, he admitted The Master System from 1986 to 1991.

For five full years, 32X The Saturn and DreamCast received no such support in the United States, a sad reminder of how poorly those systems were managed. I'm singalord x thank you all for watching and I'll see you next time. you