Brutal Gamer

Lookin’ Back #1 – Sega Master System

By Mike - May 10, 2009 - 13:41 UTC - 1 Comment

Hey there, kids!  Welcome to the first installment of a new regular feature here on Brutal Gamer, ‘Lookin Back’.  Here we will look back at the ghosts of gaming past and talk about some awesome stuff, and some not so awesome stuff.

For the first edition, we’re going back in time to the first real console I ever owned, the Sega Master System.  It was released in Europe way back in September 1987, and was extemely successful.  It was a direct competitor to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and was an 8-bit cartridge based system, with a similar contoller to the NES.  It had 2 buttons and a direction pad, which worked pretty well.

Master System II

I owned the Master System II, which was designed as a low cost version of the system.  It removed several components from the original system which had become unnecessary.  It also, in my opinion, looked a lot nicer than the first one.  The Master System II also had a built in game which would start automatically if you switched the system on without a cartridge inserted.  This was initially the rather good ‘Alex Kidd in Miracle World’, and was later changed to ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’.

I played the hell out of that system, and there were some great games for it.  I can’t actually remember playing a game for that system that I didn’t like.  As well as the aforementioned Alex Kidd and Sonic, I played other platform games like Zool and Wonder Boy, as well as the original Mortal Kombat and Lemmings games.

What was interesting is that the Master System was supported alongside it’s successor, the Mega Drive, for quite some time.  In fact, the Master System had quite a long life in Europe, with the last game released for the system being ‘The Smurfs : Travel The World’ by Infogrames in 1996.

So all in all, I really loved this system, and I’ve even downloaded a couple of Master System games off the Wii Virtual Console.  It’s a shame that Sega had to stop making consoles, because they really did make good machines that, in the 8 and 16-bit era at lease, really gave Nintendo a run for their money.  If you can get hold of a Master System with some games, then I suggest you do, and experience what was, in my opinion, one of the best consoles ever made.

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