Sega Master System

In the late 80's, Nintendo was not the only arcade giant to throw its hat in the ring; Sega entered the home video game world as well. Their Sega Master System, however, was not a particularly pleasant arrival. Whenever Sega is claimed to do no wrong, the SMS inevitably comes up.

It wasn't a bad system per se. Its graphics were good, its sound was great, and its console was compact enough to put anywhere. However, most games had no decent concept of skill level. The ones I played seemed to settle for two extremes in difficulty range; either a game was easily finished in one day, or too ridiculously hard to bother trying. This is not unlike having two choices for candy; a stick of gum whose flavor is over in 30 seconds, or a jawbreaker candy the size of a beach ball. If there was a "middle ground," I didn't stick around to see it.

This leads to a mixed review of games. Black Belt (shown above) was sort of a poor man's Mortal Kombat; a game ahead of its time. Choplifter was a fantastic port of this classic title, though extremely easy. By comparison, whenever I think of games like Fantasy Zone, with its sluggish controls, blinding colors and gratingly tough boss characters, I want to pull my hair from its roots with the memory alone.

The one true saving grace of the system was Sega's constant penchant for using the latest state-of-the-art technology whenever they can. Their light gun for the system was the first of the best, for any home video game system. A 3D goggles add-on was also available. Built into the system itself was a small port for game "cards"; credit card sized chips with tiny yet affordable game titles. On occasion, these game cards were often very intriguing, including an acceptable F-16 flight-sim.

 It's subject to debate when discussing how amicable this system's demise was. While Sonic the Hedgehog made them a major gaming force in later years, this system is remembered very little. All I know is, my not-so-pleasant experience with the SMS kept me from buying Sega game systems for years...well, that and finally owning an actual computers, with games more to my liking. I loved many Sega arcade games (all of them actually), though the SMS is on my list of least-favorite classic video game systems, as sad as that is to say...