Tendo City

In my first post, system and hardware. I'll deal with the games in a followup.

The Sega Master System was Sega's second console, after the extremely unsuccessful and Japan/parts of Europe only Sega SG-1000. The SG-1000, as an aside, is about equal in power to the Colecovision. It was released the same day as the Famicom (NES) in 1983, but is well behind it in power. The SMS, however, is more powerful than the NES. It was released in 1985 in Japan, 1986 in the US, and 1987 in Europe. It was a great success in Europe and Brazil, but was unsuccessful in the US and a definite failure in Japan. The SMS lasted from 1985-1989 in Japan, 1986-1991 in the US, 1987-1995 in Europe, and 1987-1997 at least in Brazil; TecToy never really stopped selling the SMS there.

There were several models of the Master System. In Japan there were two main models, the Sega Mark III (the Mark I and Mark II referred to the two revisions of the SG-1000) and the Sega Master System (using the Western shell type). In the US and Europe there were also two models, the first, original style, and the Master System II, which is smaller (though not NES 2 small). You can also play SMS games on a Genesis if you use a Power Base Converter, though without physical modification PBCs only work on a model 1 Genesis; on a model 2 part of its plastic shell blocks the Genesis 2's power port. There was also a model 2 converter that was released in Europe and does work with Genesis 2s. You can also play SMS games on a Game Gear with a Master Gear converter, or its variants. Despite all these ways to play the games, most people in the US didn't have one. I certainly never played one, back when it was around. Don't know if I ever even heard of it then.

Most games come on cartridge, but the system also has a card input port, and some games and accessories come on card. The cards look a lot like Hudson's PC Engine/TurboGrafx cards of a few years later, I assume that Sega's design "inspired" Hudson's. The Master System II, Master Gear converter, and model 2 Power Base Converter (the Europe-only, Genesis 2 compatible one) all do NOT have a card port, however, so on these systems it is impossible to play or use card-based games or accessories. That's too bad, but it's something to consider -- there aren't that many games on card, but the 3-D Glasses require the card port to be able to use them, and they're awesome if also poorly supported.

Some Master Systems have a built in game. In order to see if one does, turn it on without a cartridge in, and see if something boots up. All model 1 US/EU SMS systems do have one little minigame built in, Snail Maze. It's accessible via a code if you turn on the system without a cart in, but it's a quite boring maze game not really worth playing. Still it's cool that there's something.

The Japanese Mark III/Master System uses vertically oriented cartridges, very much like Atari carts. They are the same looking as SG-1000 carts except for the labels, and SG-1000 games will play in the Mark III or JP SMS. SG1 games were available in both cart and card formats, and both work on the SMS. Only one downside -- SG1 games running on a Mark III or SMS have darker color palettes than they should. Sega messed something up in the hardware design of the Mark III and as a result it displays all SG1 games too dark. This is not fixable, to have them look right you need an SG-1000. Western card-based SMS titles will work in a Japanese SMS, because there is no lockout, but Japanese SMS or SG-1000 card games won't work on a Western system without system modification, unfortunately, because there is a lockout.

The US, European, and Brazilian Master Systems all look the same (excepting later TecToy redesigns) and play carts that look the same and work on any of those systems. There are a few games which will not work in other systems because of PAL/NTSC compatibility issues, but most PAL-exclusive SMS titles work fine in NTSC even though they'd stopped releasing any SMS games in NTSC territories long before they did in PAL ones. This is quite fortunate, because it means all American gamers need to do to play the much larger European SMS library is import some; a few won't work, and there are lists of which they are out there, but it's quite a few compared to the long list that will. Awesome.


What I have is an original-style Sega Master System, with no built in game other than Snail Maze. The system isn't small -- it's similar in length and width to an original PS2, except it's a little longer but not as high -- but it's good looking and has nice angled styling on it. The system looks pretty cool, really, all black and red and with lines on it. The carts are extremely, extremely plain, with nothing but the game's name in text on a small label on the front and absolutely no artwork, but when in the system look like they fit well and you can see the game's name easily on the cart when you look at it. The carts, which are nearly identical in size to Genesis carts, have some nice design stylings, but I wish they had larger labels with pictures, they're just too bland looking.

The SMS has two controller ports, RF and A/V out on the back, and a power supply. It uses its own power supply, which I have, but evidently Genesis 1 power supplies will work with it as well; the two use different amounts of power, but they're pretty close. The A/V cable is the same one a Genesis 1 would use, and like with that system is mono only (as is the system, just like the NES). The system also has an expansion port used by the Japan-only FM sound addon. The power button is on the front. On top are Reset and Pause buttons; like the Atari 7800, the pause button is not on the controllers, but quite inconveniently is on the system itself. Awesome design there, Sega and Atari. The controllers themselves... well.

The system I got came with six different controllers, five first party and one third.

-Two standard SMS Control Pads - This is the controller most people used with the system. It's got a control pad and two buttons, labeled 1/Start and 2. Yes, on the SMS Start and Pause are different buttons, when the game says "Press Start" at the main menu it means to press 1, not the pause button on the system. Anyway though, these controllers are terrible. I'd read that they were bad, and all it took was about two seconds of using one to decide that yup, they're awful. The d-pads are extremely mushy, and the rectangular brick design is as uncomfortable as the original NES pad. There's none of the comfort and good control of the Turbografx controller here. Fortunately, you can use Sega Genesis controllers with the Master System. A few games are incompatible and require you to use an SMS controller, but most (apart from games that require a special controller) work with the Genesis pad thankfully.

-the Sega Light Phaser light gun - The gun I have does not work (the auction description said it didn't work, so this wasn't surprising), but it's a cool looking angled black gun. I'll have to take apart and try to fix this or buy another one, I want to play the SMS's lightgun games.

-the Sega Sports Pad trackball - This is a trackball controller that was only supported by three games, all sports titles -- Great Soccer, Great Hockey, and one other. It's a not-that-great trackball with somewhat slow motion. It does have a controller emulation mode, so you can use it with incompatible games (and this is good, I don't have any of the compatible games), but while it's kind of interesting to have, I won't be using this much. It's more frustrating to use than it's worth, it's just not a great trackball... and no games were released for it that actually made any use out of it anyway. Why in the world would you release a trackball and then only have a couple of sports games support it, when such controllers are meant for things like Missile Command and Centipede? So stupid... (In Japan there was a spinner controller released, for one-axis only analog control, supported by Galactic Protector and Woody Pop; the controller and former game were Japan only, while the latter got a Western release only on the Game Gear. Why not release those games here modified for trackball support, it could have worked... oh well.) I wish Global Defense had had a mode which supported this, as a Missile Command-inspired game it'd have been perfect.

-the Sega Control Stick - This is a little arcade-ish joystick with a stick on the right and two buttons on the left. Yes, the controls are backwards from everything else ever. Kind of odd. It works alright, but why is it backwards?

-Finally, I have a third party Quickshot joystick. It looks like a flight stick and has two buttons on it, but it's digital, not analog -- it's got minimal motion, like an Atari joystick. Still, it makes you feel a little more like you're actually flying a plane for After Burner or something like that, and works fine.

Overall though, I'm very thankful that the SMS supports Genesis controllers, so I can just use one of my Sega 6-button Genesis controllers with the system and enjoy playing SMS games with one of the best gamepads ever made. B is button 1, C is button 2; the rest of the buttons do nothing, you still need to pause on the system. Works fine though. I'm not sure which of these actual SMS controllers I'd use if I had to use one, all have real drawbacks.


Finally, the system came with the SegaScope 3-D Glasses. One ear piece had broken off, as is very common, but I taped it back on and the glasses work fine and stay on, they just won't fold up now. Oh well. The glasses are shutter glasses, so the system and game are synced up so that it displays two images, alternating frame by frame. The glasses are synced to the system and block each eye for a fraction of a second when the other eye's picture is on screen. As a result if you look at the picture without the glasses on, you see everything doubled. However, if you look at it with them on, you see in 3-d, because each eye is seeing a different picture and the difference between the two makes it look three dimensional. It's like a not quite as good version of the Virtual Boy's technology, and is quite similar to what modern 3-D televisions and movies use.

There is noticeable flicker, unlike the Virtual Boy -- the picture does flicker a little as you look into the glasses. Also these will not work with all televisions -- many modern LCD and Plasma TVs cannot display refresh rates high enough for the 3-D Glasses' high refresh rates to display properly, evidently (you need to double the refresh rate to display two pictures, of course). My TV is a CRT so it works with them just fine, and I can see the 3d effect. It's pretty awesome, I wish that more than eight SMS games were in 3d. It's really too bad that they didn't catch on... just like with the VB, or the Japan-only Famicom 3d glasses, these things just didn't get popular, no matter how cool they are. Sure, they give some people headaches, but not everyone gets that, and the effect is awesome. 3d movies and such have been around since the 1950s, but really only now is 3d finally starting to achieve real popularity... though I think with the 3DS and the breakthrough of glasses-free 3d will be a major, major step, the fact that you do need to wear these glasses or use a special system like the VB is a definite hurdle. The SegaScope 3d glasses aren't very comfortable, for someone who wears glasses like me anyway; without glasses I think it'd be a little better, but they're big and bulky and aren't very comfortable. It's worth it anyway though for the cool 3d effects, some of the 3d games look really cool.

I understand the Game Gear is literally the same system, and games COULD be played on both just by plugging them in, if only the cartridges weren't changed up.

Some first thoughts on the games I have so far (will expand these later):

Power Strike (complete) - Compile shmup, great game. This game is a port of the original Aleste from the MSX, which was one of Compile's earlier shmups. As a result it's pretty good, but isn't quite as great as later ones like Gun-Nac (NES), SMS Power Strike II (EU only and amazing), the two GG Aleste games (the first JP only, the second JP/EU (in EU as "Power Strike II", though it's a totally different game from the SMS title; the two Game Gear Aleste games are two of the best handheld shmups of their generation, it's too bad they are rare and expensive... but anyway.) or their 16-bit shmup lineup (MUSHA, Space Megaforce, Blazing Lazers, etc.). Still, this is a pretty good game, and better than their Zanac on the NES at least. There are eight different sub weapons, so there's good variety there. The graphics are simple though, and the game repetitive but reasonably good. It's a good game, classic early Compile shooting, but I'm glad I only paid a few dollars for it, several years ago when I got this copy. The game goes for $20-50 on EBay, and if I'd paid that much for it I'd definitely be disappointed. It's a fine game, but not quite worth that kind of money. I do like the different weapons though, Blazing Lazers for instance only had four weapons, but this older one had eight? Blazing Lazers is amazing, but they were a little stingy with weapon variety. :)

Psycho Fox (cart only) - Decent platformer. Your attacks remind me strongly of DecapAttack on Genesis. I found that game boring and not very good, but I think I like this a bit more. The game's a cute cartoon sidescroller starring a cute cartoon fox. Simple game, but fun once I get into it. It is hard though, one hit kills you and if you die you start the stage over from the start. That's not nice. No saving, but at least you have infinite continues. Still this is a hard game. There are no rings or anything and enemies don't usually drop anything, but there are powerups in eggs scattered around the levels. Your attack is very short range until you get the longer-range item for your backpack from an egg. This is as I said very much like the later title DecapAttack, where you had a very short range melee attack and a longer range throw attack. The game's tricky, your throwing item won't hit a small enemy right in front of you, and there are pits of death everywhere so you need to be very careful. You have momentum too, so you'll need to get a running start to get over a lot of the jumps. This is no competition for Sonic, but it's an alright game, difficulty aside.

Outrun (complete) - okay for an 8-bit version of Outrun, but not too much reason to play this over better versions. There was a later Outrun 3-D release, but only in Europe. It's rare evidently, I'll have to get it eventually though.

Hang On & Safari Hunt (cart and case) (Safari Hunt requires the Light Phaser) - combo cart, two okay but not great games in one. Hang On is the Sega classic, and is alright but not amazing here as usual.

Golvellius (cart and case) - Great Compile action-RPG-shooter. Some compare this to The Guardian Legend, but that's a better, and different, game. Golvellius is more action-centric. The game has long, 30-character passwords for saving, like TGL. You are Kelesis, a guy dressed a lot like Link but with spiky anime hair, and you have to save the kingdom and find the missing (presumed kidnapped) princess, of course. The gameplay is as I said split between three game types. First are sidescrolling areas. Here you do the usual platform jumping and hitting enemies stuff. There are some bosses in these. Don't go down the wrong path, you can't scroll the screen back. Second are what you do for most of the game, the topdown overworld. You go from screen to screen, like in a Zelda overworld, but following a more linear path -- you wander around within each area, but have to accomplish specific tasks to move on to the next area. Enemies spawn infinitely on each screen, so get used to it. Collect money by killing enemies and spend it in the holes, because in Golvellius people live in holes in the ground (sort of like Zelda's caves). Some holes are visible when you enter a screen, others only appear when you do something like having the right item or killing enough enemies. The item screen is only accessible via the Pause button on the system, which is kind of a pain. The third kind of gameplay are top-down, auto-scrolling shmupish areas, except you'r a guy with a sword, not a ship shooting projectiles. These areas are fun, but not too long, and mostly exist for boss fights. So yeah, the game has variety, but it is action-focused -- this isn't a deep and complex Zelda clone, but something simpler. It's also not as good as The Guardian Legend, none of the three game types match either that game's shmup parts or its topdown adventure parts. Still, it is a good game, and something definitely worth playing. I will be playing this more.

Space Harrier - No reason to play this much considering I have the 32X version, I probably would not have bought this if it hadn't come with the system. I do want to play Space Harrier 3-D, though, that sounds cool.

After Burner - Same as above, except there's no After Burner 3-D.

Maze Hunter 3-D (3D Glasses required) - Topdown platform/action game. The gameplay is bland and average, but the 3d effects are pretty cool. You wander around a topdown maze, killing enemies. There are different layers at different depths, perhaps a little like Jack Bros. on the Virtual Boy, except all on one screen. No continues, no saving, of course. There is a cheat code that lets you continue, but you can't use it in the last world so good luck.

Blade Eagle 3-D (3D Glasses required) - Shmup with a twin-layer system, reminding me of Vertical Force on Virtual Boy but the SegaScope 3D glasses, while cool, aren't the VB's equal, so it's a harder game to get used to. This game is a bit disappointing, telling which level you and the enemies are on can be tricky -- the 3d isn't as good here as in the other 3d games I have. It's an okay game, but should have been better. I love the title ("Blade Eagle 3-D"... cool name), and Vertical Force is an incredible game, but this is nowhere near as good as Vertical Force.
Missile Defense 3-D (Light Phaser & 3D Glasses required) - I'll need a working lightgun for this. Looking at the demo reel though, the 3d effects are AWESOME, probably the best of any of the four 3d games I own. That 3d earth is just amazing looking!

Astro Warrior - early SMS shmup. Okay but unspectacular, reminds me of Star Force. Simple graphics and repetitive shooting gameplay. I like this kind of game well enough, so I find it fun. :)

The Ninja - Sequel of sorts to Sega's earlier arcade/SG1000 game Ninja Princess, except this time you're a ninja guy rescuing a kidnapped princess, instead of a ninja princess saving her kingdom. So yeah, the story isn't as good. Still, Ninja Princess is a great game, so I wanted this one. This is a very good but hard game, no continues here at all, just some points-based extra lives. Tough. I've only gotten to level 4 (of 13) so far. Great game though, this is one of the best games I own for the SMS -- this and Zaxxon 3-D are my top two, I think, followed by Golvellius. It's a topdown action game where you go up the screen, killing enemies. Just like in Ninja Princess one button fires straight up, and the other fires in the direction you're moving, so you have good control of firing without a twinstick, which is cool. Both buttons together does a Ninja disappearing move, to dodge projectiles and such. This game is a memorizer, and enemies always appear from the same places every time. To level four, some levels feel very similar to Ninja Princess levels, while others are completely different -- this game isn't just a port with new graphics and a different character, but a different game based on the same basic concept and with many similarities to that original title -- enemies, bosses, some settings, etc. return. Still though it is a new game, and I like it a lot. This will take a while to memorize, but I'll definitely be working on it.

World Grand Prix - Bland behind-the-car F1 racing game. Track editor, but of course it won't save it. It does have a good sense of speed, but the gameplay is so dull... it's a standard Pole Position clone. There are 12 built-in tracks, and you can play them individually or as a circuit. In the circuit you get points depending on how fast you finish the track -- you do one lap of each course, trying to avoid the cars and not crash. If you take too long and miss the minimum time in any track, you lose and fail the circuit, no continues allowed. Start over from the beginning. There are difficulty levels, but even the easy one is very hard.

Shooting Gallery (Light Phaser required) - Need working light gun, basic lightgun game.

Fantasy Zone - A classic shmuplike shooting game... haven't played it much yet though. Also on NES and TG16, but I don't have those versions. Seems alright, but it doesn't immediately tell me why some people love this game so much. The bright and colorful graphics are nice though. I don't think you can continue.

Enduro Racer - cart in case - Racing, an isometric, Excitebike-ish game. Drive diagonally up the screen, going over or avoiding jumps, and try to reach the end of the stage before time runs out. There are ten tracks to get through. Each is short, but the game is hard anyway because there are no second chances, fail one track and it's back to the beginning for you. Graphics look nice, but the gameplay is very simplistic. This game got mediocre reviews, and deserved them. Still though, just fun enough for me to not regret buying (considering that there aren't many SMS games, so you shouldn't be as picky as you can be on, say, the NES).

Kenseiden - cart in case - sidescrolling action/platformer - Hard classic Japan set sidescrolling platform/action game, reminding me of various other games a little like this on the NES, TG16, etc. This is a pretty good but hard game with no continues unless you use a cheat code and 16 levels. I haven't gotten past the level 2 boss yet, it's a bit too hard and frustrating. Still though, good graphics and sound, and good (if slow) gameplay. This is one of the better SMS games I have.

Double Dragon - cart in case with poster (EU ver.) - beat 'em up, has the 2 player simultaneous mode NES Double Dragon doesn't. Not as good as the Genesis version though of course. There's a lot of flicker. Still though, it's a fine port of the arcade classic. It's a very simple game, and not as good as later, better beat 'em ups, but for an early title in the genre it's not bad. The main negative probably is that it's a short game. This isn't a port of the longer NES game, but the arcade original, and there are just four levels. You have infinite continues too, and start from exactly where you died, not back at the beginning of the level, through the first three levels, and can have them in level 4 too with a simple cheatcode.

Zaxxon 3-D - complete (3D Glasses supported but not required) - Rail shooter. The original Zaxxon was an isometric shmup where you moved around in three dimensions, but this one puts you behind the ship. The 3d glasses make figuring out what height you're at a little easier, but it's still a tough game. Still though this game is awesome, and is my favorite of the three 3d games that I have and can play. Zaxxon 3-D is a great game, the 3d is both really cool looking and is a big help in playing the game -- figuring out where enemies are without it is tough, but it's easier with the glasses. This is a new game, not just arcade Zaxxon, and I think it's great. The gameplay is simple and follows a fairly strict pattern, but it's very well designed, and does actually have an ending (according to the manual), this doesn't loop forever. No continues of course, but oh well.

Vigilante - cart only - sidescrolling beat 'em up, rescue your kidnapped girlfriend from the evil gangs. Not a very good game. This game was also on the TG-16, where it has better graphics but similar gameplay. I just finished this game, because it's got infinite continues and only five moderate-length levels, but it's pretty poor. I guess it was somewhat popular then, though I have no idea why... retro-reviews of all versions are usually not good from what I've seen, and they are right. The enemies are very frustrating, you need to hit the button at exactly the right time or you'll start getting hit, and if that happens you might lose a lot of health -- the basic enemy for instance doesn't just punch you or something, but grabs on to you and starts steadily draining your health until you shake him off. Argh, is that annoying! At least all of the bosses can be beaten by exploiting simple, easy to figure out patterns -- with each one I died several times, but eventually figured out what the trick was and then beat the boss as soon as I pulled off the attack pattern well. You punch with one button, kick with the other, and jump with both. There is a jump-kick and stuff, but I couldn't figure out how to use it consistently. The motion isn't something obvious, annoyingly. But with a game this subpar and frustrating, poor controls should be part of the package, yes?

Global Defense - cart in case with poster - Sort of like a shmup crossed with Missile Command. Unique game, I like it. You move the cursor around the screen by default, and fire by pressing 2 (it has autofire). If you press and hold 1, you move the base around instead of the cursor, and 2 still fires (to the one spot the cursor is on). You need to keep the missiles from getting across the screen, in whichever way they are going. There's a meter on the bottom of the screen, if it fills up in any level (because too many missiles leaked through) you lose. You also lose if your base gets hit by enemy fire. The game gets tougher as you get farther in, but it's fun. No continues of course.

Aztec Adventure - cart in case (no manual) - top-down action-adventure game, probably Zelda-inspired. This game's linear though, you go through 11 levels straight through. There's no saving or passwords, so good luck beating it. The gameplay's decent though, with okay graphics and some simple puzzles as well as the action. Seems like an okay but not great game, I'll need to play it more.

Quote:I understand the Game Gear is literally the same system, and games COULD be played on both just by plugging them in, if only the cartridges weren't changed up.

The basic hardware is very similar and they use the same CPU, etc., but the two are not identical. There are two differences:

First, the Game Gear runs at a lower resolution, while the SMS runs at a higher resolution. This makes sense, because the small screen of a portable doesn't need to be as high resolution as a television does. This means that platformers on both systems are usually going to be a bit better on the SMS because you can see farther ahead.

Second, the Game Gear can display more colors on screen and has a much larger color palette. The SMS has a very limited color palette, much like the NES, but the GG has a much larger one. This is why GG games cannot run on a Master System, but SMS games can run on a GG (Master Gear/Gear Master converters, as I mentioned, do just that) -- the resolution issue can be gotten around (the GG can display TV resolutions after all, through some hardware design trick or something considering that the screen is lower res than a TV, think of the TV Tuner), but the color limit cannot.

Having a way of playing GG games on a television is something that a lot of GG fans badly wish existed, but aside from a few special homebrew creations, and perhaps some dev kits or something, it doesn't exist. What there are are a few homebrew edits of some GG games to reduce their color counts down to SMS levels, so the games could be played on an SMS with a flashcart or in emulation or something... that is possible. Quite a bit of work, though, and there are just a couple of them.

Interesting.

I had heard this when I read that the GG version of Sonic the Hedgehog was basically the Master System game stuck on a GG cart.

It's fortunate I have a functioning Game Gear again. It'd be nice to play them on a TV, but oh well. So long as this one has longer lasting capacitors, this should do well enough for me.

Well, there were many games released on both the SMS and GG. Most of the SMS versions of those games were Europe/Brazil-only releases because by the time the GG came out in 1990 the SMS was dead in Japan and nearly dead in the US (Sonic the Hedgehog in mid 1991 was the last US SMS release, while in Japan the last game was in late 1989), but there were many ports. Of the 8-bit Sonic games, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Spinball, and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine got SMS ports released in Europe. Sonic Blast also had a Brazil-exclusive SMS port. In each case the basic games are identical, apart for some color differences and the viewing distance due to resolution. (The other six GG Sonic games were GG exclusive, including the two Japan-only ones, and there were no SMS-only ones.)

I think you just took that comment a little too literally, they are pretty much the same games but they aren't 100% identical. Just nearly so. Still though, even though I do have Sonic 1, 2, and Chaos for GG, I'd like to get import EU copies of the SMS releases too, it'd be cool to have them and I'm sure they'd be better with the bigger viewing distance, even if the graphics wouldn't be quite as nice looking thanks to fewer colors. Sonic 2 GG especially I find somewhat miserably hard on the GG, that's probably the first one I'd want.

Covering newer SMS games, and the light gun games because I got a gun.

Covered here:
Alien Syndrome, Black Belt, Hang-On / Safari Hunt (each will be covered separately), Kung-Fu Kid, Marksman Shooting / Trap Shooting (will be reviewed as one game), Miracle Warriors, Missile Defense 3-D (covering again because now I can play it), Rambo: First Blood Part II, Shooting Gallery, Thunder Blade

Alien Syndrome - Alien Syndrome is a conversion of the popular Sega arcade game. It's a pretty bad port, unfortunately; anyone wanting to play Alien Syndrome on a home console should play the NES version or the Wii remake, not this SMS release. The multiplayer is alternating only, not simultaneous like on the arcades or NES, which is deeply disappointing. The graphics aren't very good. They aren't the worst, but they leave a lot to be desired. The game won't work with Genesis controllers, so you're forced to use one of the pretty poor SMS controllers for this thing. Controls aren't great either. The game is playable, as you run around the mazes killing aliens and figuring out how to get off each floor, but even though I like the other versions of this game, Sega's own SMS release just doesn't match up at all. Games on both the SMS and NES were usually better on SMS, but not in this case.

Black Belt - Black Belt is actually a Fist of the North Star game. While the NES and GB games with this license kept the title in North America, Sega's SMS and Genesis ones did not, and got retitled with generic themes. Still though, once you know what this is the theme is obvious, because nothing was changed except for the title, character names, and maybe some of the story. In the game you play as some guy who totally isn't Ken the Eagle, who punches people and makes them explode. Unlike the Genesis game, in the SMS one the exploding people are kept intact in the US release, which is good because apart from that this game isn't very fun. The game is a side-scrolling action/beat 'em up game. The best comparison I can make, gameplay-wise, is China Warrior on the Turbografx. Black Belt plays very, VERY similarly to that game, except with occasional fighting game style boss battles included at the end of each level. Gameplay within each level is very, very similar to China Warrior, as you walk to the right and hit people. Use punch and kick correctly against the correct enemies, jump over some things, jump up and collect the health-ups floating through the sky (China Warrior does the same thing too, health-ups come floating by in the air) by holding down and then pressing jump to do a higher jump, and punch lots of people and make them explode into parts. In the main levels, graphics are decent but quite small; the fighting game style boss battles, however, have nice large sprites. Just like China Warrior the game is frustratingly difficult, and I don't find it nearly fun enough to get very far, but I did stick with it enough to get to level 2, which is more than I can say for that game... It's got no continues too, of course, but on the SMS that's somewhat expected.

Hang-On - Simple mid '80s racing game, and a port of the arcade game of the same name. You drive forwards and see if you can get to the end of the course, pretty much -- this game isn't exactly complicated, and there are no options. Still though, it's simple fun. The game looks nice enough and plays well. The scaling's okay. I think I might have more fun with this than Super Hang-On for the Genesis... that one has lots of options and features, and better graphics, but somehow the scaling on most of Sega's Genesis games just looks so terrible to me that I find them barely playable.

Kung-Fu Kid - This game is a sidescrolling platform/beat 'em up game, pretty much. This game is inspired by Hong Kong Kung Fu movies, apparently, because you can jump to the top of the screen and hit people on the way down. The graphics are colorful and cartoony and look pretty decent, for the system. Gameplay isn't amazing, and is frustrating at times, but the game plays decently. The game is a little easy to exploit at times, though. For instance there's an enemy limit on screen, so if too many enemies are on screen more simply won't appear. Enemies chase you too, so if you go past some enemies and then just keep going, they'll just fruitlessly run after you and you can walk quite a ways with no opposition. Handy. Bosses are much trickier, though, and you'll definitely want to memorize their patterns and when to attack because there are no health-ups in the levels and if you die you start the stage over. This game's not great, but it's alright, definitely some fun. (Continues... yeah, no, like usual for platformers on this system)

Marksman Shooting / Trap Shooting (Light Phaser required) - This game has two different modes, as the title suggests, but it's good that there are two, because each of these as a full game would be ... quite limited. This is obviously a very early SMS game, and the graphics are simplistic and not very good. Audio's no better. Gameplay's not too bad though, really. In Marksman Shooting, targets appear, police enemy outline style, for you to shoot. Each appears for a limited time, and you get different amounts of points for where you shoot the target -- the most for hitting the heart, the least for the outer edge. That's cool, the other SMS lightgun games I have don't do sectional damage (and nor do my NES Zapper games, I think). You move on to the next stage if you hit a high enough percentage of shots, a certain (and steadily increasing with each stage) percentage of your shots need to hit to move on. Fail to hit the target percent and you lose, start over from the beginning of the game. No continues or extra lives here. Trap Shooting is like Duck Hunt's skeet shooting mode, but on the SMS, pretty much. Hit the targets as they come flying up, try to hit enough of them to move on. I like Marksman Shooting better, but this one's okay I guess.

Miracle Warriors -Miracle Warriors is an RPG, and in fact it's the first JRPG ever released on a console in the US. The game is played on a grid-style overworld. The main window shows the tile you're currently on, so your actual navigation is done just on a small window on the side, and you can only see two squares in each direction at any time. That's annoying, I'd much rather be able to see farther than have a big window with plain, mostly empty graphics on it... I know that that's where you fight, but really this system doesn't work well. To be able to play you really must have a map of the overworld, and fortunately one came in the box with the game. Either get a complete copy or print the map from the web before you play. Dungeons will require hand-mapping though, unless you cheat and download those maps too. Fight battles, go to town and buy items (and no, you can't see any farther in town than you can in the overworld, same system), go back out and grind some more, repeat until you beat the game or get bored. You do get party members as you go along, but it's a very, very repetitive and simplistic game. I got this for the historic value, not expecting to enjoy it, and my prediction was right. I was impressed that the decades-old battery is still good, and the saves in all four save slots were fine, but the mind-numbing tedium, and high difficulty level (it's very easy to get killed, enemies are strong, and healing isn't cheap), of the actual gameplay quickly makes me lose all interest.

Missile Defense 3-D (Light Phaser and SegaScope 3-D Glasses Required) - As I said in the first post, the first thing I noticed about this game is the really, really awesome 3d. The 3d in this game is easily the best of any of the four 3d glasses SMS games that I have. The game looks really impressive and things really have depth, the 3d globe and city screens are just awesome. As for the game, you try to shoot the missiles before they destroy the cities. The story is that two countries are shooting nukes at eachother, and you, an outside force in some kind of turret with anti-missile lasers or missiles or something, need to destroy all of the missiles each side fires at the other in order to avert mass casualties on either side. You get three chances to destroy each side's missiles. Each is a one-screen stage where you shoot at the missiles. Each "level" consists of destroying the missiles for both sides, and the stages repeat each level, so that means that there are six screens in this game, three per side. First, you get a chance as the missiles are launched from the launching base. If you miss any (and you likely will unless you're good at the game) you move on to stage two, where you shoot at the missiles as they cross some terrain between the countries. If you fail to hit them all, you move on to stage three, where you defend the city itself from the incoming missiles, coming in fast. If you miss any this time the city blows up and it's game over, and the game tells you that there are no second chances in nuclear war. Succeed and you move to the other countries' stages, and beat that to go back to the first ones at a higher difficulty. The game does eventually end, if you destroy all the missiles for ten rounds, so it's not as bleak a concept as Missile Command, but the thematic similarity is obvious. The 3d helps with this genre, you get a bit of a sense of depth and it makes it a little easier to hit the missiles. Perhaps that's why three of the eight SegaScope 3-D games are light-gun shooters? Either way on that, this game's pretty cool. It requires multiple accessories to play, but it plays well and is definitely worth a try if you can. I'm not a light gun fan (I'm just so horribly bad at hitting anything with light guns that I just can't enjoy them very much), but for a light gun game this one's kind of cool, though I certainly must admit that without the 3-d graphics it'd be much less interesting. Still though, it has them and they look pretty good.

Rambo: First Blood Part II - Rambo is a Commando or Ikari Warriors style vertical-scrolling shooting game where you take a soldier through the jungle, killing as many of the numerous enemies who come your way as you can. The game has two player simultaneous, which is fantastic, and is a pretty good game despite the very steep difficulty. Like NES Ikari Warriors this game is very difficult, with just three lives and no continues without a code, but you won't find a simple at-point continue code in Rambo, unlike that game. There are codes to continue from the beginning of each of the six levels, but that's it. And to make matters worse, for some insane reason each of the levels (two through six) has a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT code you need to input, even though you need to have died at that stage in order to continue from it. Oh come on, that's just evil! As for the game though, it's good. The graphics are quite nice, with large sprites and good use of color. As with many SMS games, you really can see how much more powerful this system was than the NES graphically when you play Rambo. Like with both of the games mentioned above I badly wish that the game had twin-sitck firing, because being able to move in one direction and shoot in another would be invaluable, but you just have to deal with just being able to fire in the direction you're facing. The game has both standard weapons and special ones, and the special ones usually fire up, but they're limited so you can't just use them, you have to get used to shooting only the way you're facing. Even though I like this game, that limitation makes me want to go back and play The Ninja (or Ninja Princess Arcade/SG1000) more, that game's system of one button firing in the direction you're facing and the other button firing up is much better than what these games do. Still, despite the difficulty and frustration, I do like the game.

Safari Hunt (Light Phaser required) - Safari Hunt is a simple light gun game. There are four different screens, each a different environment -- forest, jungle, etc -- and animals appear for you to shoot, each worth different point values based on how hard it is to hit them and such. Simple game, like most 8-bit light gun games, but functional enough. The graphics are nice. This might be better than Duck Hunt's main mode, I'm not sure.

Shooting Gallery (Light Phaser required) - Shooting Gallery is a very simple and straightforward, but good looking, light-gun game. Targets move across the screen and you shoot them. All that matters is that you hit enough of them, how much ammo you waste missing or where you hit them doesn't matter. Hit enough to move on, miss too many and it's game over. Sounds bland, right? It would be, except that the game has nice, and somewhat original, graphics. The concept here is that you're in a fair-style shooting gallery, so the targets look like cardboard cutouts and such or are balloons, and if you miss and hit the background, you blow a hole in it and reveal the wall behind the "sky" or "jungle" or what have you that you seem to be shooting at. That's pretty cool, the graphical style kept me playing for a little while even though the simplistic gameplay did not.

Thunder Blade - Thunder Blade is a port of the Sega scaler arcade game. The scaling is removed or done in software here of course, which makes the game somewhat frustrating and annoying, but while definitely subpar it's not completely unplayable. There are two modes to the game. First is a top-down view that looks basic and plays okay. The sprites are huge, which means your ship looks nice but is a big target. As a shmup on its own this wouldn't exactly be much to remember, but it functions at least. The second mode is a rail shooter. Here the game works much worse, as expected. The "scaling" is quite jerky and dodging bullets is difficult. You have to use different buttons to hit ground and air targets in this game, but the ground missiles are more limited (one at a time on screen, I think?) so don't miss. The game's playable -- move around the screen and keep firing and you might get somewhere -- but not that fun. Somehow I do come back to this once in a while, but the SMS just isn't powerful enough to even remotely do scaler games justice.

3-D?! Amazing! Now THAT'S the future!

Yeah, sure. :) I'd love to see Virtual Boy, SMS 3-D glasses, and Famicom 3-D glasses ((JP only) 3-D Hot Rally, JP Rad Racer, JP 3-D WorldRunner, a few more, not released in the US so the US vers. of the latter two games used red and blue glasses optionally) games in the 3DS Virtual Console... I'd be very surprised to see it because technologically it'd require some work, probably, VB especially (tough system to emulate, I think), but it would be so cool... few people have played games like those in 3-d, and they should. :)