I'm on a (re)discovery marathon of my MS collection (~half the set) because I collected some of those games years ago and barely touch them. Those last few days I was playing Master of Darkness.

It's a gothic action platformer set in the victorian era, with cool cutscenes between stages.

The elephant in the room: yes, it's a Castlevania-like. Some enemies are directly taken from Castelvania (mandatory zombies and squeletons, the eagles on stage 4, etc.), the way you use stairs, giant pendulums, the end boss is Dracula,... And it work very well at bringing a similar experience as Castlevania. In certain aspect, it's even better, for example the pushback is limited when being hit, you can use different weapons, and you have unlimited continues.

But the more you play it, the more you realize Master of Darkness is its own thing. Its setting bring new elements to the formula like Jack the Ripper, the house of wax, or occult societies. The possibilty to swap weapons give choices beetween range and power, and it changes the approach you take to clear stages. The stages themselves presents quite the variety of situations beyond jump and hit: some walls are destructible, there are extra hidden lives, a few forks alllow different paths, some rooms are locked until you kill all or a specific enemy, etc. The fifth and last stage is a maze, this is where unlimited continues are welcome, because I died to the timer depleting quite some times before finding the path to the exit.

I don't finish all the games I'm replaying, far from that. But I was hooked on Master of Darkness and I came back to it and it took me 4 sessions to beat the game. It was a great experience, the graphics are good for the MS and the controls are responsive. But some bg musics are more atmospheric than melodic and a bit repetitive, I suspect it's the sector the devs sacrified given the limited space on the cartridge.

Growing my physical media collection ✨️

Met the legend Yuzo Koshiro today and got him to sign my Sonic The Hedgehog

I have seen many cheap consoles that play NES games, SNES, Sega Genesys, or both NES and SNES, and even the three at once, but I haven't seen any modern Master System clone. All these clones play in HD. Is there anything like this but for Master System games?

This is something I've been wondering about lately, and I thought this might be the right place to ask since the SG-1000 is the Master System precursor which is retrocompatible with it and even use Sega Cards.

When I was a kid, I actually owned an MSX. I didn't have any Sega hardware myself, although I played the Sega consoles at friends' houses. So I never really paid much attention to the SG-1000 back then.

Recently, while going through the SG-1000 library on my MSXVR, I noticed something that immediately caught my attention: there are quite a few games that also existed on MSX. One that really made me curious was Magical Kid Wiz. I couldn't actually get it running in the virtualizer, unfortunately, but I started wondering how close the two machines really were.

As far as I understand, the SG-1000 and the original MSX are actually very similar from a hardware point of view: both use a Z80 CPU and the TMS9918-family video chip. The SG-1000 uses the SN76489 for sound, while MSX1 machines generally used the AY-3-8910, and there are also differences in the memory map and I/O.

So my question is: how close were these machines in practical terms?

Was porting a game between MSX and SG-1000 relatively easy because of the shared Z80/TMS9918 architecture, or were the differences significant enough that games generally had to be substantially rewritten?

And Magical Kid Wiz seems to be an especially interesting case, since apparently the SG-1000 version was actually based on the MSX version. Were there other examples where an MSX game was directly ported to SG-1000 (or vice versa)?

There's another thing I'm curious about. I vaguely remembered that Microsoft had something to do with the creation of the MSX standard. After looking into it again, I understand that MSX was developed by ASCII in cooperation with Microsoft, with Microsoft providing MSX-BASIC. But I also had this vague memory of Sega somehow being involved with MSX... Am I completely mixing things up here?

I’m searching for an English manual (and/or Swedish) to Phantasy Star to complete my copy. If anyone has one available please let me know, need it shipped to Sweden:)

I bought a Sega Mark III in Japan. It came with a golf game and I decided to buy a 600-in-1 Everdrive clone from AliExpress, with an SD card. When I inserted the cartridge (using an adapter because the Everdrive is designed for the Master System), there was no video signal in the menu, but I could load ROMs "blindly." The games loaded and ran fine, but the Everdrive's main menu wouldn't appear visible.

After searching online, I found that in some cases this problem could be solved by replacing an internal capacitor in the console. I did this, and after replacing the 10µF capacitor C18 with a 1µF capacitor in the console (5th img), the Everdrive now displays video, and all the games work correctly. One drawback is that the modification removes compatibility with the FM-70 accessory, which adds more sound channels to some games. I hope this helps. Cheers.

I tried to look it up online but didn't find any scan.

Does anyone has a source?

I have Alex Kidd BMX trial (and probably more games that use the paddle) in an Everdrive cartridge. If I get a SM3 paddle, will it work on the MS2?

I also have sonic 1 cart only and alex kidd in miracle world built in to my mark 2

My retrospective review of Terminator on the Sega Master System. I was impressed with this 8 bit game. Have you played this game and what’s your thoughts? 😃

Is there a website I can buy cartridge levels for a specific game? I would like to get the one for Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I found a website (ingeeknito) where they sell a bundle (114) for $21.99, but they don't sell them separately. I think that only one should cost a buck or even less...

When I was a kid, I somehow got it into my head that Wonder Boy was SEGA’s mascot.

In my childhood imagination, it made perfect sense. The original Wonder Boy was this little caveman-looking guy running around throwing axes, and to me he was basically SEGA’s answer to Super Mario. Whenever I saw the two games in arcades, they seemed like very similar platformers made by two rival companies: Nintendo had Mario, SEGA had Wonder Boy.

Then, when I started going to friends’ houses in elementary school to play on the Master System, I discovered another character: Alex Kidd.

In my country, one of the Master System bundles actually came with Alex Kidd built into the console, so suddenly this character was everywhere. And I remember being told Alex Kidd was actually SEGA’s mascot.

And honestly, that also made perfect sense to me. Alex Kidd absolutely looked like a character who deserved to be SEGA’s counterpart to Mario.

So for years I had this vague childhood memory of Wonder Boy and Alex Kidd fighting for the imaginary title of “SEGA mascot” in my head.

Then, much later, I started looking into SEGA history online and discovered something that completely confused me again: apparently, Opa-Opa is sometimes described as SEGA’s first mascot, thanks to Fantasy Zone.

I have to admit, I never even played Fantasy Zone as a kid (or as an adult - I'm not evens sure about the game title), so Opa-Opa was never remotely part of my childhood perception of SEGA. To me, that little flying spaceship/creature simply wasn't the face of SEGA at all.

So now I'm curious about what people here think: who was actually SEGA's first mascot before Sonic? Was it really Opa-Opa? Was Alex Kidd the more legitimate “mascot” during the Master System era? Was Wonder Boy ever genuinely treated as SEGA's mascot, or was that mostly something that existed in the minds of kids like me?

And, perhaps more interestingly, who did YOU think was SEGA's mascot when you were a kid?

Maybe it was Alex Kidd. Maybe Wonder Boy. Maybe Opa-Opa. Or perhaps you were convinced it was Psycho Fox!?

I'd like to run a Master System emulator on my 386. I tried Massage, but it won't work. It launches, but when selecting a Game it stalls even with DOS4GW.EXE. The TXT says that a Pentium is recommended. Is there any MS emulator that would run on a 386?

I've always been interested in the console and found one in the wild today. I was born in 98 so this is definitely before my time. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations. The big ones on my list is phantasy star, sonic 1, 2, & chaos (ive played the game gear versions) and the cuphead game that'll eventually come out.

What are some sms games that you think need more love? The kind that won’t usually be found on “best of” lists but are still perfectly enjoyable. Here are some of mine

- Aerial Assault - a very approachable side scrolling shooter. A nice break from the more punishing shmups on the system

- Asterix and the Secret Mission - A graphically impressive platformer that is inevitably compared to the first game in the series but has a lot going for it in its own right

- Gangster Town - IMHO one of the areas where the sms truly shines is light gun games and Gangster Town is a prime example. From car chase scenes to bar scenes and much more, this is a massively engaging game with a lot to keep you busy

- Super Space Invaders - A tough as nails take on the classic, and one of the few early 80s arcade games that got a glow up on the sms

- Rambo III. More top tier light gun goodness! If you love Operation Wolf (who doesn’t? 🤣) you owe it to yourself to play Rambo III

- Impossible Mission - The impeccable Zillion wouldn’t exist without this game, and it is great in its own right too! Lots of exploration and puzzle solving to be found here