The Sega Master System Discussion Thread

[64bitRuss]

Playchoice was not the same thing as the .vs arcade cabs. The games were the same, but with the .vs cabs it was a normal arcade game experience, put in a quarter and play as long as you can. The .vs cabs were also dedicated units, one game a piece. The playchoice was the NES game select thing on a timer.

I like the SMS, but it wasn't exposed at the time, we're talking 1985. Was the SMS even available in the US in 1985? Yes, all those great Sega arcade games were all over the place here, like Thunderblade, Space Harrier and Afterburner, but honestly it wasn't until the Genesis that Sega and all it's arcade hits became readily available.

[DreamcastRIP]

Yep, in that mid-'80s period when Sega were releasing smash hit game after smash hit game into the arcades the company was riding very high in many a gamers' appreciation here.

That one could soon after buy home console conversions of those iconic arcade coin-ops that were not only made by Sega themselves but could be played on Sega hardware too was a very attractive proposition at the time.

Small wonder that the NES was crushed as a consequence. Arcade coin-op games were the gold standard for so many gamers of that generation here and with what Sega offered it was no surprise that NES was left gathering dust in Boots.

As RT commented, it also cannot be overstated just how huge a deal Sonic The Hedgehog was in Europe back then. The Sonic mascot was everywhere and helped to sell many SMS consoles for a great deal of time after even the smash hit Mega Drive arrived.

Such was the reach of Sonic as a marketing phenomenon back then that Sega not only sponsered the then dominant Wiliams F1 team...



... they even sponsored the European F1 GP of 1993 that was staged at Donington Park. The race was officially branded as the FIA Formula One World Championship Sega European Grand Prix!







From the mid-'80 through to the Mega Drive's success in the '90s Sega and Sonic were king in Europe. Like RT says though, when reading some of today's games industry media sources one could be forgiven for thinking history was altogether different than it actually was were we to believe the nonsense being pedalled. 

[TL]

Guess with something like the Gamemate, cards would have been ideal, cheap, your not looking at epic sized games etc.On systems like the Lynx though, how 'big' did the cart sizes go? seem to recal some issues concerning Lynx Eye Of The Beholder (which never came out, did it?) needing a big cart.

Did technology increases allow for 'bigger' cards without incurring bigger production costs in later years?.

The design of the Lynx cards was superb they could go up to 8 megabits (512k) without bankswitching. The issue with Eye Of The Beholder was that it required expensive battery back-up which also made the cards more bulky and stopped you from shutting the door on the Lynx 1 (like most homebrews on PCBs). EOTB was released several years ago by a community member in limited numbers with much more relaible flash memory replacing the battery back-up.

[TL]

Playchoice was not the same thing as the .vs arcade cabs. The games were the same, but with the .vs cabs it was a normal arcade game experience, put in a quarter and play as long as you can. The .vs cabs were also dedicated units, one game a piece. The playchoice was the NES game select thing on a timer.

I like the SMS, but it wasn't exposed at the time, we're talking 1985. Was the SMS even available in the US in 1985? Yes, all those great Sega arcade games were all over the place here, like Thunderblade, Space Harrier and Afterburner, but honestly it wasn't until the Genesis that Sega and all it's arcade hits became readily available.

My mistake, was probably because they had the same games and used the same hardware that I got confused. They were still just a NES in an arcade cab and the games looked extremely poor next to the arcade games of the time in my opinion.

Both the NES and the Master System were released in the US in 1986, the second NES test market was in 1985 (after a failed one in 1984) the official US countrywide release was the year after.

[Rogue Trooper]

Playchoice was not the same thing as the .vs arcade cabs. The games were the same, but with the .vs cabs it was a normal arcade game experience, put in a quarter and play as long as you can. The .vs cabs were also dedicated units, one game a piece. The playchoice was the NES game select thing on a timer.

I like the SMS, but it wasn't exposed at the time, we're talking 1985. Was the SMS even available in the US in 1985? Yes, all those great Sega arcade games were all over the place here, like Thunderblade, Space Harrier and Afterburner, but honestly it wasn't until the Genesis that Sega and all it's arcade hits became readily available.

You also have to bear in mind that by time Nes 'landed' over here, we'd already had arcade conversions of Capcom, Sega etc coin-op's as they were licensed out to likes of U.S Gold, Activision etc and they were retailing at time of launch for around £10 and by Nes arrivial on budget labels for around £2.99.There was no way people were going to pay price of Nes carts for another 8 Bit version of an arcade conversion, espically when St/Amiga versions were doing the rounds at around £25. (kept the prices simple here, prices ranged depending on tape/disk/format at various times).

Nes games were too little, too late and far too expensive.

[Rogue Trooper]

Playchoice was not the same thing as the .vs arcade cabs. The games were the same, but with the .vs cabs it was a normal arcade game experience, put in a quarter and play as long as you can. The .vs cabs were also dedicated units, one game a piece. The playchoice was the NES game select thing on a timer.

I like the SMS, but it wasn't exposed at the time, we're talking 1985. Was the SMS even available in the US in 1985? Yes, all those great Sega arcade games were all over the place here, like Thunderblade, Space Harrier and Afterburner, but honestly it wasn't until the Genesis that Sega and all it's arcade hits became readily available.

I can recal reading in various UK console/multi-format magazines when they were giving sheer volume of pages to coverage of the latest US trade show's that the Ms was 'pretty much dead over there' and for MS owners..'sorry, stuff all'.It became clear the Nes was by far the dominant force over there (something back then i could never grasp), but it oddly worked out in Sega's favour as it let them stamp home the 16-Bit factor of the Genesis at such shows, whilst in Europe, secure European software support for the Ms which was doing bloody well thank you.

DC has put up outstanding pictures, which describe far better than any ramblings i could, just how big Sonic was over here.

You should have seen UK stores on Sonic 2 release day, Sega could do no wrong.A few places like C4 Digitiser and Gamesmaster magazine scored the game around 65% but it was like holding back the tides with your little finger....Sega were huge once Sonic hit.

[TrekMD]

Looks like the SMS has a good following!  It is really interesting how the NES became successful in the US and the SMS was "it" in Europe.  I guess the marketplace was in a different place in each side of the world and that led to this difference. 

[64bitRuss]

Looks like the SMS has a good following!  It is really interesting how the NES became successful in the US and the SMS was "it" in Europe.  I guess the marketplace was in a different place in each side of the world and that led to this difference.

Yes it is an interesting story I think. I would actually think a book could probably be written about how the two companies came to dominate two completely different continents. I would like to know the intricacies of how this happened. Maybe the rental market played a role in the US, as I recall NEVER seeing a SMS game for rent at any video store, but I live in middle America, not in a metropolis. How did it come to be that mom and pop video stores chose the NES to rent games? It was almost like the Master System didn't exist except in what I saw in video game publications like EGM and Gamepro.

[DreamcastRIP]

Looks like the SMS has a good following!  It is really interesting how the NES became successful in the US and the SMS was "it" in Europe.  I guess the marketplace was in a different place in each side of the world and that led to this difference.

History here wasn't quite like that either, i.e. it wasn't so much a case of the SMS being 'it'. The SMS was 'it' relative to the NES but...

... 8-bit consoles full stop were largely secondary to the dominance of the 8-bit home computers whereby the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 were the two most dominant systems. Then in the late '80s and into the very early '90s a good number of those wishing to move on to a new system traded up to either an Atari ST or Commodore Amiga.

Consoles only really took hold of the videogaming landscape with the advent of the Mega Drive which was launched in Europe in 1990 - approximately two years later than in Japan and one year later than in North America.

Simply put, the SMS sold well here (and utterly crushed the NES) but the 8-bit and then the 16-bit computers were still the majority choice. The shift away from home computers to consoles really kicked in once the Mega Drive and Sonic The Hedgehog arrived. I'm not ignoring the likelihood that a proportion of folk moved from their ST or Amiga to PC either because PC gaming of course gained in popularity as of '93 following the arrival of Doom.

[Shadowrunner]

Looks like the SMS has a good following!  It is really interesting how the NES became successful in the US and the SMS was "it" in Europe.  I guess the marketplace was in a different place in each side of the world and that led to this difference.

Yes it is an interesting story I think. I would actually think a book could probably be written about how the two companies came to dominate two completely different continents. I would like to know the intricacies of how this happened. Maybe the rental market played a role in the US, as I recall NEVER seeing a SMS game for rent at any video store, but I live in middle America, not in a metropolis. How did it come to be that mom and pop video stores chose the NES to rent games? It was almost like the Master System didn't exist except in what I saw in video game publications like EGM and Gamepro.

I had the exact same experience growing up in a small town in Canada. I can only remember one store that sold the SMS and it was a hardware store. Never saw it for rent anywhere or had any friends  who owned one. Maybe it was different in big cities but for me I barely knew it existed.

[onthinice]

Looks like the SMS has a good following!  It is really interesting how the NES became successful in the US and the SMS was "it" in Europe.  I guess the marketplace was in a different place in each side of the world and that led to this difference.

Yes it is an interesting story I think. I would actually think a book could probably be written about how the two companies came to dominate two completely different continents. I would like to know the intricacies of how this happened. Maybe the rental market played a role in the US, as I recall NEVER seeing a SMS game for rent at any video store, but I live in middle America, not in a metropolis. How did it come to be that mom and pop video stores chose the NES to rent games? It was almost like the Master System didn't exist except in what I saw in video game publications like EGM and Gamepro.

I had the exact same experience growing up in a small town in Canada. I can only remember one store that sold the SMS and it was a hardware store. Never saw it for rent anywhere or had any friends  who owned one. Maybe it was different in big cities but for me I barely knew it existed.

I agree! Video game rentals were the bomb. Never remember any SMS games being rented. As mentioned in another thread, toy giant Tonka handled the release of the Master System for a while. Sega learned with the 16-bit to handle releases themselves.

Also seems in U.S., that we have a phenomenon called keeping up with the Jones syndrome. We want what the Jones family has, at the time to keep up with your neighbors, you had to own a Nintendo Entertainment System. The phenom occurred with the Playstation and Playstation II as well.

My favorites on the SMS are Choplifter, Rampage and Safari Hunt.

[TrekMD]

I would have never associated Tonka with video games.  Mabye that also had a negative impact on SMS sales in the US.  They company just didn't know how to sell the system.

[Rogue Trooper]

TGM gave official prices of MS and Nes systems as follows prior to their UK release:

Nes (under Mattel):

£100 for basic package (Nes, 2 controllers and Super Mario Bros).Deluxe version £150 (had Zapper ROB, Duck Hunt+Gyromite).

Zaapper on it's own £19.99 with ROB costing £49.99

Games to range from £20 with 'upper limit' of £35.


Master System (which was originally to have been distributed in UK by Ariolasoft, but deal fell through), under Mastertonic:

£100 got you the console+2 controllers, Light Phaser was £44.95, and 3D Glasses at £49.95

Games:

64K cards £14.95
One Meg cartridges £19.95 2 Meg carts at £24.95

article said:

'...The sega, with it's range of more up-to-date arcade conversions, such as Space harrier and Outrun, is arguably instantly more impressive than the Nintendo'

So just thought i'd post these 2 comparisons, plus the 65XE in the 5200 thread, to give US readers an idea of the prices and approaches Sega, Atari and Nintendo played when entering the 8 Bit console scene inUK in 1987.

[Rogue Trooper]

Found an old Special Reserve advert (a superb UK mail order company) highlights price differences between NES and MS (early '92)

Sega Master System II with Alex Kidd+Special Reserve membership £59.99

As above but with Light Phaser and Operation Wolf £89.99.


Most expensive MS games listed retailing at £28.99 (Outrun Europa).


N.E.S Action Set (Nes, zapper, 2 pads, Super Mario Bros+duck Hunt) plus S.R membership, free joypad extender cable.

Most expensive games £49.99!!!! (Gremlins 2, Star Wars, Turtles 2 etc) with Maniac Mansion clocking in at whopping £54.99

And these prices are at discounted rates! who on earth was going to pay £50+ for an 8 Bit console game, when on same pages you had the Mega Drive with it's most expensive games being £47.99 (Phantasy star 2) and the Atari Lynx with it's most expensive game being £27.99 (Ult.Chess Challenge).

And people overseas wonder why Nes did'nt take off over here....

[DreamcastRIP]

... And people overseas wonder why Nes did'nt take off over here....

Indeed. Some great and entirely useful information there, RT. You mentioning Special Reserve sure pricked my nostalgia gland there!

Another favourite chestnut I've seen claimed by deluded Nintendo fanboys to 'explain' why their beloved NES bombed in the UK was that it was the fault of the console's UK distributor, Mattel. To elaborate,

* said idiotic fanboys blame Mattel while being conveniently blind to the fact that it was Nintendo who chose Mattel for the job - the buck stops with Nintendo

* said idiotic fanboys seek to make themselves appear so smart by suggesting that Mattel should have stuck to what they had experience in - selling Barbie dolls. Haha, funny, but factually incorrect of course. Said fools evidently don't know of the...



... and that through Mattel's M Network division the company had also released a number of game cartridges for the Atari 2600 console.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_Network

Oh, and a great number of dedicated handeld consoles too.

Source: http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Mattel/index.html

So, the abject failure of the NES in the UK cannot be blamed entirely on Mattel. Especially not when the console tanked in pretty much every other European country too... where, I might add, it was distributed by other companies.