Sega Master System – How To Not Fulfill Potential
Well friends, it all started on Christmas 1990…
A younger me saw an ad for MS Power Base and fell in love instantly. I would love to be able to show you such a video, but the internet, despite containing 12,000,000 shades of adult material, has no room for it. I’m beginning to wonder if I imagined it all. In any case, during the month of December I relentlessly urged my father (B. Simpson would have been very impressed) to buy the Power Base with Hang-On, Safari Hunt and Light Phaser. And credit to the man, ignoring late mortgage payments, final demands, and much to my mother’s annoyance, he duly complied. He was stunned.
However, I came across this American advertisement for the package which at £100 seemed expensive but was actually good value for money. In addition, there was also a hidden maze game. Someone has to recover the hidden games. I dug up my Master System a couple of months ago, which still works despite my cousin pouring coke on it (almost certainly if you breathe too much into an Xbox it will explode) and boy did it bring back some memories! What also struck me was how bad some of the titles were. These were games that he had played to death! Ninja and World Soccer were personal favorites, but both are graphically woeful. That sounds harsh given that it was some of the early release titles, but let me continue.
Golden Ax is the game that really caught my eye. Ninja (1987) and World Soccer (also 1987) were released just two years before Golden Ax (1989), but if you put them side by side, you wouldn’t guess they’re from the same console. Other popular 80s titles (eg Ghostbusters, California Games) and even early 90s titles (Indiana Jones, Tom & Jerry) pale in comparison to Golden Axe’s graphics. It’s true that the levels are two-tone and the rendering is disconcerting in places, but the sprites look about the same as they do in 16-bit. The sprites are large and well detailed. The main protagonist may only have around 15 frames of animation, but the sword movement feels smooth and lifelike. All this with a palette of only 64 colors compared to the 512 of the Mega Drive.
Most 16-bit to 8-bit conversions are terrible (the horrible E-SWAT comes immediately to mind) and a lot of positive things can be said about Sega’s stance of making completely different 8-bit games under the same license ( Sonics 1 & 2) but I invite you to take a look at Streets of Rage and Mortal Kombat. Both games are one dimensional and therefore creating different 8-bit versions would seem silly. The care with both is remarkable. There’s not much you can do with Master System’s Texas Instruments SN76489 (remember them?) sound chip, but its graphics capabilities are amazing. Of the 64 available colors, the Master System can display 32 at a time. This is in comparison to the 64 for the Mega Drive and the terse 25 for the NES. The Zilog processor on MS runs at 4 MHz compared to 1.79 MHz on the NES. The Zilog chip was also used in the Mega Drive along with the Motorola 68000.
The clues were there. Streets of Rage, after a night with too many jars (blurred eyes and all) could be mistaken for the 16-bit version, save for the awful sound. Sacrifices had to be made, the Master System’s reduced memory (though still twice that of the NES) couldn’t handle two players, but all the levels remained intact, including the excellent elevation scenario. With Mortal Kombat, more sacrifices had to be made. There are only two stages, but most of the characters are there, with the exception of the unpopular Kano. Each sprite is large, well drawn, and the animation works to create a fun fighting game, the likes of which European/Japanese Master System owners never saw again. Why so specific with the region? Good…
Did you know that Street Fighter 2 existed on the Master System? I’m sure it wasn’t until earlier this year that I found out that MS is still supported in Brazil (and emulation products in China and Taiwan). SF2 is a capable beat em up, and while it looks decidedly more basic (albeit better than the C64 version), it really does make you wonder what Sega could have done with its first storied console. Some Master System games are also available through the Wii online service. Who the hell would have thought this of a Nintendo console in the early nineties!
There are things we can not avoid. The NES’s stronger game library and character recognition meant that it outsold the Master System nearly five to one. When Sega invented Sonic, the Master System was subject to poor arcade talk and puzzle gameplay. Galaxy Force’s inventiveness is the anomaly here, Sega didn’t make use of the advanced capabilities of the MS until it was too late. Sonic 1 was the last MS release in the US. Most would assume the Mega Drive release is to blame for this and Sega had to do something to stop the NES dominance. The fact is that Sega made an 8-bit console superior to the NES, but chose to use the 16-bit first, thus inviting the inevitable coup de grace from Nintendo (the SNES).
I’ll always love the Master System and while it’s unlikely it will ever get its current incarnations, I can still enjoy Sonics, Streets of Rages (oh yeah, the sequel is there too) and Mortal Kombat. Just don’t mention E-SWAT.
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