The Sega Master System: Most underrated console ever

Gamers thrive on a good two-man fight. Xbox or PS2? PSP or DS? Every generation throws a hero down the unpop charts. And one fight with a clear winner, right out the gate, was the 8-bit battle between the chunky little NES and the big-padded underdog, the Sega Master System. Could there be an alternate reality where the Master System came out on top? Where playground battles were fought not over whether Mario’s Tanooki Suit was better than Link’s Master Sword, but over the best way to save all the hostages in Rescue Mission? As a matter of fact there was. I know because I’m from that reality. And I’m here to tell you that the Sega Master System never got its due. In fact, let’s say it: the Sega Master System is the most underrated machine in the history of gaming.

Doomed from the Outset

It could have been a contender. Just seven months separated the North American releases of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System in 1986. But those seven months were enough time for Nintendo’s little gray box to plunder the lion’s share of the consumer market, as well as the major players’ third-party exclusivity. By the time Sega launched their Sega Master System Power Base, there simply wasn’t the free space left in the market for the machine to establish, well, a power base. Nintendo had snapped up the best softcos of the day and signed them to exclusivity deals: if you wanted to make your game on the market-leading NES, there’d be no sloppy seconds for other systems’ user bases. The battle for the hearts and minds of 8-bit gamers was no battle at all: in the year following its release, the NES garnered a whopping 70% of the gaming market. (By comparison, the Wii’s strong 2008 saw the console battle to remain above the 50% mark.)

Another World, Another Chance

But across the other side of the globe in my homeland of New Zealand (pictured), Nintendo never had a foothold. Halfheartedly distributed by Mattel, who were far too busy making sure shelves were fully stocked with Stinko (the Stinky Master of the Universe!) figures, NES never found the uptake. Stores would dutifully provide a demo unit kitted out with Probotector (I only just learned that you folks didn’t have this: Contra with robots!) or Dr. Mario and leave kids to ignore the game at their own pace; console games were such a novelty in those days that only the well-heeled and technologically adventurous gave them a day in court. (If I told you we’d only had electricity for ten years, would you believe me? That’s not true, by the way).

But the Master System was another story entirely. We knew how to plug in a console by the time Sega sloped dejectedly out of North America, bucked up its ideas, and determined to take the Pacific by storm. And the company steamrolled over us like we were the beach at Normandy. With Sega handling business personally, there wasn’t a man, woman or child in New Zealand who didn’t know what the Master System was – and want one. The national paper at one point reported that even the Prime Minister had a Master System. (Had you going again, huh?)

New Zealand Embraces Sega; World Shrugs Bemusedly

We never looked back. Super Mario Brothers was fine and good, but put next to Alex Kidd in Miracle World, all the finely-honed minimalist mastery in the world couldn’t compete with the vivid graphical blush, the varied gameplay options (he had a helicopter! And a motorcycle that made every level as hard as Mario Bros‘ World 8!), the inexplicable rock-paper-scissors boss battles. Lacking what dorks would come to call a “hardcore,” we didn’t realize we should be giving Castlevania a go, so we were perfectly happy with its ersatz Sega equivalent, Master of Darkness. And being as Sonic the Hedgehog was the last game Sega ever tried to foist on the American people, the battle between Super Mario 3 and Asterix was never fought outside of bizarro territories like Brazil and New Zealand.

Or, to put it another way, any arena in which Asterix for the Master System went toe to toe with Super Mario Brothers 3, the plucky Gaul beat the tar out of the pugnacious plumber. Was it a better game? We grudgingly admitted no. But we liked it better anyway (didn’t hurt that Asterix comics were more popular in New Zealand than Spiderman, Superman and the X-Men combined. That one’s true, too).

Burying the Past

Time has been as unkind to the Master System as the markets were in its day. The sleek little powerhouse, whose stylishness of frame was outstripped only by the inexplicable oddness of its design (a Pause button on the console itself? What witchery is this?!), received as merciless a drubbing from its successors as it had from its contemporaries. You can’t unlock the Master System versions of the Sonic games on any Sega compilation disc. It’s as if the company was ashamed that the best version of Sonic 2 was never even released in North America. (That’s right: you can have Mario 3 over Asterix, but the Master System’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 runs rings around its Megadrive – sorry, Genesis – big brother). And while the SNES’ Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts is justly celebrated as the ideal version of Capcom’s goblin-slaying adventure, nobody ever talks about how the earlier Master System version managed to play comparably to the arcades, even while incorporating a unique RPG-style character-development system that wouldn’t come into vogue until the Playstation instalment of Castlevania.

The Master System’s story is a sad one because, as evidenced by its performance in The Freak Territories, it had the chops to go the distance. (Master System consoles are still manufactured and sold in Brazil: the territory was the only region to receive the system’s version of Street Fighter 2). It had vastly superior processing power to the NES, and on the days when designers felt like harnessing this, the machine shone. Cheaper, cynics would say more disposable, the machine never had the punchy steadfastness to be iconic in the same as the NES. Like its descendant, the Dreamcast, the Master System was a unique treat for those who “got” it, and like the Dreamcast, it reaped mixed rewards from this position.

If only there were a way to travel to the realm where the Master System got its due… without spending 20 hours over the Pacific, at least.