Sega Master System

When life knocks you down the accepted response (well to post on facebook to get likes) is to get back up when life gives you lemons then you take those lemons coz lets face it they were free and free shit is always good and in the late 80s when you wanted a NES like everyone else and you get a Sega Master System you whine like a little bitch.
Which in retrospect was probably a bit of an over reaction. When you consider that back then Sega pretty much single handedly ruled the arcade scene. With their graphical innovations in gaming technology getting all pissy over a system that was bound to get translations of their greatest arcade hits pretty much marked me as an ungrateful little shit. Nintendo of course had their machines in the arcades but these were usually the donkey kong,s super mario brother's or the nintendo 10 choice games that gave you exactly 20 minutes gameplay for exactly one of your great British pounds sterling.
Sega on the other hand had Space Harrier, Thunder Blade Out Run And Afterburner to name just a few ohhhh and Golden Axe ohhh and Shinobi, Hang On' G-LOC' Shadow Dancer ...you get my point.

So yaaaaay Sega Master System with 3 built in games being Hang On' Safari Hunt and a shitty little snail maze game that you only knew was there if you held up on the control pad when you started the machine. The box art for the majority of these games (and lets be fair) was a little uninspiring to say the least. To say the most they were fucking crappy little white pieces of god damn awful shit with just a hint of what the game inside the box was all about. The first real Game purchase (i don't count built in games as real games EVER) was the arcade classic and one of my all time favourite arcade games Shinobi. Fuck yeah was i excited i couldn't wait to get home open up that piece of shit box and and play an arcade perfect version of my fave game :)



:(

WHAT A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT THIS IS
It didn't sound the same it didn't look the same and it didn't even feel the same. Now bare in mind that there was a garage near where i used to live that sported its very own Shinobi arcade machine that I would play at every single available opportunity. You can only imagine my horror when the 8 bit version didn't quite match up with my expectations of how it should have been (well ok you cant imagine and you don't care i'm the nerd here not you) but trust me disappointment was an understatement.

It seemed as a general rule the latest arcade games of the day didn't quite convert the way i was hoping they would do on a system that was a fraction of the power. Space Harrier was a joke Thunder Blade a travesty and the less said about Afterburner and Out Run the better (so ill shush).
Fortunately the games that were developed specifically for the Master System did a lot better. Enter (what i considered to be) Sega's answer to Super Mario Bros ....Psycho Fox now there was a bright colourful bouncy game with great (for its time) graphics and sound and (psst don't tell anyone better than Super Mario Bros) bloody fun it was too. as was Alex Kid and the legend that every Master System fanboy to this day will still speak about in hushed tones Wonderboy 3. oh and while i'm reminiscing the master System version of Castle of Illusion was vastly superior in gameplay to its Megadrive (Genesis) counterpart. Later on in its life it even got itself some very well done versions of the Megadrive classic sonic games as well.

There was Certainly a lot of great gaming to be had on the Master System and many a childhood memory locked in my bedroom letting life pass me by I had with this tiny 8 bit goliath of gaming history (i might even see if i can get myself one again)

So was it better than its main rival the Nintendo Entertainment System?

FUCK NO