The Master System at 40: The Truth About Sega’s Most Underrated Console | Retro games

TThere’s an old saying that history is written by the victors, and that’s as true in video games as anywhere else. Nowadays, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System was the only console available in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you grew up in Nintendo’s target markets of Japan and North America, this weird game is basically chunky He was The only game in town – the company owned Mario after all, and its similar control over third-party developers created a monopoly on the major titles of the era. But in Europe, where home computers dominated the era, the NES was beaten by a technologically superior competitor.

The Sega Master System was originally released in Japan in the fall of 1985 as the Sega Mark III. Based on the popular Z80 CPU (used in home computers like the Spectrum, Amstrad, and TRS-80) and a powerful Sega-designed video display processor, it featured 8K of RAM, a 64-color palette, and the ability to create 32 on-screen animations at once—making the NES (based on the older 6502 processor) look like an ancient relic.

It was initially marketed domestically as a continuation of the Sega SG-1000 series of consoles, which were closer to affordable home computers than game consoles, with optional keyboards and printers. But as the NES became popular in both Japan and the United States, Sega rethought, removed some of the computing features and re-released the Mark III in 1986 as the Master System – a bold gaming machine with a sleek, thin, angular look, contrasting with the beige Betamax look of the NES.

It also came with a light gun, and Sega even released a pair of 3D glasses for the system and a bunch of compatible games. “I’m going to call the 3D version of OutRun,” says programmer Chris White, who wrote the Master System emulator that Sega later used on its PlaySega website. “Sure, it made you hit your head and the alternate flash of the lenses was enough to trigger a mild seizure, but it reflects an era when Sega wasn’t afraid to try wild experiments.”

Sega oversaw distribution of the Master System in the United States (at least initially), but looked to domestic companies to handle the more fragmented European market. For the UK and France (and later Spain), this role will go to Virgin Mastertronic. “Sega partners had a better marketing position in Europe,” says Nick Alexander, who was managing director of Virgin Mastertronic at the time. “And their retail and distribution relationships were better than they were in those days. The video game industry magazine Computer Trade Weekly had a joke that Nintendo saw Europe as where dragons lived – and they didn’t understand that, and they were nervous about it. So they put their efforts in the States.”

Alexander, who has run Virgin Games since 1983, has embraced that company’s youthful style. “I was trying to think of a video game equivalent of a band touring,” he explains. “So we bought a double-decker bus and drove it all over the country. We took it to school playgrounds and malls. It got a tremendous amount of coverage. Nintendo has always marketed its games as family entertainment, but the only market in Europe that did it well was Germany. We pitched it to teenagers and we knew that if we got them, their younger siblings would want the Master System too. That’s how we beat Nintendo in Europe.”

And while Nintendo had Mario, Sega had a valuable asset of its own: its arcade heritage. The company set out to bring many of its popular coin-op games to the console, including Space Harrier, OutRun, Golden Ax, and After Burner, and market its new console in the West as an arcade in your living room. Although they were not perfect ports of the original titles, they were much faster and more versatile than any previous home computer translations. For those of us who were addicted to arcade games at the time, it seemed pretty futuristic.

“The games are visually superior to other Z80-based systems as a result of Sega’s graphics hardware,” White says. “It offers the programmer scrollable tile maps and freely placeable sprites. Both are easy to use and free up a lot of processing from the CPU. The design had a number of similarities to Sega’s arcade hardware. In fact, the main system’s graphics chip is actually based on the TMS9918, used by Sega’s older arcade machines.”

For European developers, Master System hardware was a dream. “We were working on Spectrum and Amstrad and our games were ported to the C64,” says Andrew Oliver, who with his brother Philip made Dizzy games for Codemasters. “We went to CES in Las Vegas and I remember seeing the Sega booth. It was huge and right next to Nintendo – and their message was: ‘It’s all about speed.'” In the past, computers were all about what was colorful and fast. So Codemasters did a licensing deal, and we got development kits – it’s a Z80, so we programmed it like a Spectrum, but the graphics chip is like a C64. The code ran very fast and you had all the nice scrolling and animated sprites. It was easy “Very much.”

UK developers also found Sega to be more useful than Nintendo. Mike Simpson was a programmer at British publisher Personal Software Services, later owned by Mirrorsoft. “We set up a small in-house development studio in Coventry, with just about 20 people, and we were doing a variety of ports,” he says. “Someone asked us to port Xenon 2, a really advanced 16-bit Amiga game, to the Master System. It seemed impossible, so we had to try! I was actually invited to Japan to learn how to program it: I spent a week at Sega in Tokyo learning from Mark Cerny [later lead architect of the PlayStation 4 and 5]. I remember rows and rows of tightly packed desks, and conference room chairs that were used to sleep on!”

Even when the Mega Drive arrived, the Master System’s popularity in Europe (and later in Brazil) meant it was still supported by simplified versions of Mega Drive games like Sonic the Hedgehog. The spin-off title Sonic Chaos, developed for both the Master System and Sega’s Game Gear handheld (which is based on the same hardware as the Master System), was one of the highlights of the series. Later, Sega introduced a remastered sequel, Master System 2, at a relatively reasonable £50 with the introduction of Sonic.

But the main system wasn’t just a repository of classic arcade games and ports from other hardware. It has its own heritage. The beautiful platformers Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, Psycho Fox, Fantasy Zone, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, the fantastic role-playing adventure Phantasy Star, and the excellent Zelda-like Golflius: Valley of Doom – these are true classics, up there with the often overlooked NES-era titles. For modern collectors, it’s also more accessible, free of the inflated prices associated with many classic Nintendo titles.

It’s true that the NES was so dominant in the United States that the word “Nintendo” became synonymous with gaming. But in Europe, Brazil and elsewhere, the main system won. The history books have been harsh on it, but for those of us who were there, who read European gaming magazines, or who studied the annual Argos and Grattan Christmas catalogs of Sega goodies, the Master System was the home arcade machine that hinted at the future of gaming. It was a promise that the Mega Drive would continue to deliver.