Almost 40 years after my mom bought me a Sega Master System, I finally made a game for it (my mother is proud of me).

It's called Oriflame and it is an arcade puzzle game inspired by Adventure of Lolo. It took me about 6 months to get to know the hardware. Now, I love the console and I want to make more games for it. The color palette is amazing!
It was fun!

It’s been a little while since I get a new SMS game, I’m running out of titles I want to get for it.

How much should I pay for an Everdrive cartridge and which one should I buy? I have a Master System I, if it matters.

This is the one I saw on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Sega-Master-System-Game-Cartridge-Console/dp/B0C7DVN5XL/

I've always had a soft spot for the Wonder Boy series.

For me, though, Wonder Boy was originally an arcade game. I remember thinking of it as one of Sega's big mascot characters, almost like Sega's answer to Mario. My older brother had told me about Wonder Boy, and when I saw it in arcades I immediately understood the comparison: colourful platforming, a recognizable character, simple controls, and that very Sega feeling.

Then came Wonder Boy in Monster Land, and that's where things started getting really interesting. Again, I knew it primarily as an arcade game. It wasn't until I was much older that I discovered that these games had Master System versions. And that's when I realized something: the Master System versions aren't necessarily just inferior arcade ports. Obviously, graphically and technically, the arcade versions were superior. That's not really controversial. But the Master System versions sometimes do things differently, and in some cases they actually add things that make them feel like their own versions.

Take Wonder Boy in Monster Land. The Master System version is remarkably faithful to the arcade game, but it also has an additional level that wasn't in the arcade version. There's a desert area and a boss that I remember as Mr. Wizard. The game also has dialogue and story written in correct english than their original arcade counterpart which was a bootleg mess!

And then there's Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap. This is where I think the Master System deserves much more respect:

• it wasn't an arcade conversion;
• it wasn't a 16-bit game being squeezed onto an 8-bit console;
• it was designed for the Master System.

And, in my opinion, it's one of the best games ever made for the system, possibly THE best. The transformation system, exploration, interconnected world, different forms, equipment, secrets and progression make it feel almost like a completely different genre from the original Wonder Boy.

Then there was the conversion of Wonder Boy in Monster World originally relased for Mega Drive/Genesis. Obviously, the Master System version is heavily reduced: the graphics were redrawn, there are fewer and shorter areas, and several features had to be simplified. But I love the little details that make the Master System version what it is. There are moments where you can tell the developers had to work around the limitations of the hardware and came up with clever solutions instead of simply removing things.

One example I remember is in the jungle area, where you have to descend into an area with the cannibal enemies. At one point, instead of simply giving you a conventional platform to climb back up, the game uses one of the enemies in a very bizarre way: after hitting it, it becomes this little square-like creature with a sad face and a tear, and you can push it around to use it as a platform.

And then there are all the weird alternate versions. Brazil got official adaptations of the games using characters from Turma da Mônica. Wonder Boy in Monster Land became Mônica no Castelo do Dragão, while Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap became Turma da Mônica em O Resgate. These weren't random pirate hacks either, they were officially licensed adaptations produced for the Brazilian market.

There are also all kinds of unofficial hacks and character replacements, including versions of Dragon's Trap that replace Wonder Boy with Sonic or other characters (like the OC Guerrero Lobo - who played it?). I remember even a "Mega Man in Monster Land"!

Finally there's the Game Gear. Since the Game Gear shares so much of its underlying technology with the Master System, I think it's impossible to talk about Wonder Boy on Sega's 8-bit hardware without mentioning it.

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap was released on Game Gear in 1992, and that version isn't simply an identical port. There are graphical and gameplay differences, and it's interesting to compare it directly with the original Master System release.

Even the first Wonder Boy was rereleased and in the US it was even renamed "Revenge of Drancon" (weird marketing move in my opinion: did they do not have faith in their own more recogizable brand names?).

(Dis)honorable mentions: the blatantly horrid US/EUR covers of thoose games! They are so bad they're good (or at least became iconic in a funny way!).

Last words: for me the 1st place is deserved to the Draogon's Trap which performed the best out od the Master System egnine and was sort of the first (or one of the first) Metroidvania before the genre gained this name.

Apenas para mostrar de curiosidade essa bolsinha que comprei em leilão , serve para guardar os cartuchos sem caixa.

I got 2 copies of Rygar in 2002, fire sold them for nothing in 2011, and recently saw that a seller had both Rygar and Solomon’s Key.

I've been thinking about this lately, and I'm curious whether I'm about to get completely destroyed by the Master System community.

I have the impression that the Master System homebrew scene is surprisingly small or weak compared with the NES, and possibly compared with other 8-bit consoles as well.

But I'm wondering if this is actually true, or if it's just because I haven't looked in the right places.

A few years ago I spent quite a lot of time with RetroPie and RetroArch, and I went looking specifically for Master System homebrew games: I remember finding very little.

There was one game in particular that caught my attention because the screenshots looked really good: Silver Valley. It was some kind of fantasy adventure/action game in which you controlled a character with a sword, fought enemies in a fairly cartoonish-looking world, and progressed mostly from left to right.

Other than that experience I didn't found any homebrew able to get my interest and probably this contributed to a completely unfair conclusion in my head that maybe the Master System was just not a very good platform for homebrew.

But is that actually true?

I know the Master System has some interesting hardware characteristics, and technically it shouldn't be that different from developing for other Z80-based 8-bit systems. So I'm wondering whether the relatively small homebrew scene is more a matter of community size, development tools, documentation, interest, or simply the NES having a much larger developer/retro-gaming community.

Is the hardware particularly awkward to develop for?

Maybe I'm also making the mistake of comparing the Master System with the NES at the wrong level. The NES homebrew scene is enormous, so almost anything is going to look small next to it.

So I'd like to challenge my own prejudice: what are the BEST Master System homebrew games?

Not just technically impressive demos, but games that are actually fun to play.

And I know I'm not alone in this.

Hey guys,

I just got a Master System Bunker for very Cheap and I wanna Play so badly.

The Problem: I have a new TV Without analogue. So I dont get a Picture on my TV. And I also didnt find any HDMI Adapters for it.

Is there even a way to Connect is These days to modern TV?

I thought I'd share a photo of my full Sega Master 3D set. I enjoy 3D and VR content from the Famicom 3D System and Master System 3D, to Virtual Boy, to 3D PS3/360/Blu-ray all the way up to VR headsets.

The Sega Master System only has the 8 compatible games but there is definitely some fun to be had amongst them.

I also have a slightly more modern way of playing them which I've shown off in the past here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogueInc/s/8YTXaox5fX

Found his old master system and wanted to check it out but it wouldn’t turn on, opened it up to find excess solder by the voltage regulator but idk if that’s what’s causing the problem

Update: I’ve since swapped out the voltage regulator and bought a brand new power adapter and now it works! Thank you for all your suggestions and help!

Hello everyone, a quick message to let you know that Get Blue Spheres! (Master System Edition) is now playable and available for free on itch. Have fun !

I recently bought a copy of The Ninja and it had this little surprise tucked away in it. The seller didn't include it in the photos for some reason, so I had no idea until it arrived.

For those who are unaware, back in the day you could call 1-800-USA-SEGA and talk with someone who would help you out in a particular game and they would mail you these Helpful Hints papers. SMS Tributes has a whole bunch of them scanned. They aren't super rare by any means, but it is the first one in my collection.

Pretty cool you could do this. Before the internet, it was indeed a different time.

I am using RetroArch to emulate the Master System and I no idea on how to turn on FM mode. Specifically for games that need a code to turn it on like Dynamite Düx. Since it wasn't released in Japan the FM mode was buried.

I never actually owned a console as a kid. No Nintendo, no SEGA, nothing. I had a MSX.

But where I grew up, SEGA was hot stuff. A lot of kids had either a Master System, a Master System II, or later a Mega Drive.

When I was in elementary school, I had two classmates who were both big SEGA fans. One had a Master System, the other had a Master System II. So whenever I went to their houses in the afternoon, we would spend hours playing their games.

The friend with the Master System II had one game that completely fascinated me: Alex Kidd in Miracle World. As I've mentioned in some of my previous posts, whenever I went to his house I basically wanted to play Alex Kidd and nothing else.

The other friend had owned his Master System for longer and had a much bigger collection. One of the games we played a lot was Ghost House. I have a very specific memory from that game: we were exploring the mansion, looking for the weapons and ways to kill the vampires, and one day my friends told me to "jump onto a spider web" because apparently I could use it like a vine... Of course, they were lying. I jumped onto it and my character got stuck for a while. It was a trap, and they had been waiting for me to fall for it! It's funny because I later discovered that Ghost House has a much older history than I realized. I had somehow remembered it as being connected to the SG-1000, but apparently that's not quite correct — it's actually a Master System game loosely based on Sega's arcade game Monster Bash. Still, considering how closely related the early Sega hardware generations were, I can see why my childhood memory made that connection.

Another game we absolutely loved was Rescue Mission. It was basically a rail/light-gun shooter where soldiers were moving along railway tracks on those little hand-powered railway carts, and we had to use the Light Phaser to shoot the enemies before they could kill them. At the time, this felt incredibly cool. Having an actual gun-shaped controller and shooting enemies on the TV was basically the definition of futuristic gaming to us.

Because the one with the Master System 1 had become obsessed with Alex Kidd after seeing the game on our friend's console, he eventually got Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars, the arcade-derived Alex Kidd game. We played that one a lot too. At the time I thought it was amazing (probably because it was Alex Kidd, and that's all I needed to be impressed). Looking back at it as an adult, though... I have to admit that it really isn't that great. I think Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a much better game.

But then we discovered Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, and THAT was the game for us. It was basically our must-play game whenever we got together. What's funny is that I only discovered much later that Shinobi World wasn't originally even supposed to be an Alex Kidd game. It started life as Shinobi Kid, essentially a parody version of Sega's Shinobi, before Alex Kidd was put into the game. So apparently even one of my biggest childhood memories was actually based on another Sega game.

Then there was Ninja Gaiden... I remember being completely amazed by the ability to grab onto tree branches and climb them up to stand on them. Today that sounds like an incredibly small gameplay mechanic, but when you're a kid playing an 8-bit console, something like that can feel revolutionary.

Basically in the 80's, kid where all into ninja's stuff, guess why? ;)

It's strange how different these games feel when you revisit them as an adult. Some of them are much better than I remembered, some are much worse, and some are still magical simply because of the memories attached to them.

I tried looking for a proper answer but here goes. Im from the UK and looking to play some of my original MS games with a convertor on a mega drive, or genesis off Ebay. my question is does this have any timing or sound issues. Here in the UK the mk2 mega drive are pretty cheap and a good example master system are pretty much overpriced.

Hello all- as I'm building up a collection of older Master System games to see what I missed out on (I was an NES-child) I've run into an issue with this game in particular twice now.

To save money and space I've bought the Master System-converter you see in the image, the NDK Master Mega Converter for my Mega Drive 1. For almost every other Master System game I've bought, save those who require an actual Master System controller like Penguin Land and Wonder Boy in Monster World, the Master System games have worked without any problems whatsoever.

But this is the second time I've bought a copy of Wonder Boy III that just won't work on this converter. The screen remains dark but at like, a different hue from when it's just turned off so SOMETHING is being sent. I've used cotton swabs and specialized cleaning alcohol to scrub away dirt and such from the cartridge, just as I did last time, and it still won't play. At this point I figure that if two cartridges of the same game give me the same result for this converter it's either the hardware, or me being spectacularly unlucky.

So, do people here know whether this is a common issue with this game and this converter? Does Wonder Boy III just require the original hardware? Or have I just bought dud cartridges twice in a row from two completely different sellers, and should just cut my losses and buy the modern collection if I want to play this game?

Just checking, has anyone printed their own manuals for games you have? Any advice? My collection is mostly just case and cart, and I am definitely open to the idea of printing my own manuals. I know it wouldn’t be completely authentic but it would definitely be cheaper than chasing down cib copies of these games . I know manuals for many sms games are available as pdfs, I guess printing them at the right scale and with the right paper stock would be the tricky bit

Hello SMS / Sonic fans! I’m making good progress on an SMS port of « Get Blue Spheres » . Here’s a demo video, I plan to release the ROM by the end of September possible sooner. I’d appreciate any feedback here or on my YouTube channel ! Thank you 😁

Most of you likely remember “the dress”. I present “the phaser”. Is the photo black and blue, or white and gold. Have we all been duped into thinking the Master System phaser was black all this time? /s