The Sega Master System

Posted by ibobev 7 hours ago

The Sega Master System(bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com)

63 points | 19 comments

djmips 5 hours ago|

This is a bit of history that has always fascinated me ever since I found out in the nineties while employed at Accolade, where we were reverse engineering the Sega Genesis, that the VDP in the Genesis was a variant / descendent of the humble 70's TI TMS9918 (mentioned at the heart of the SG-1000 / Colecovision / MSX and more) - we made a lot of hay in our clean room reverse engineering effort using Texas Instruments data sheets for the 9918!

It is also casually mentioned that the TMS9918 inspired the VDP in the Famicom/NES but I haven't seen any direct proof because it also seems possible that the 2A03 was derived from Nintendo/Ikegami Tsushinki 'Namco Galaxian' inspired arcade board design notably used in Donkey Kong. It's an interesting thread and perhaps studying Galaxian arcade hardware and Donkey Kong hardware and contrasting it with the TMS9918 and 2A03 can establish some geneology for home and arcade VDP design in the early 80's

But it is clear that there was a pretty 'open source' attitude towards hardware IP at SEGA and Nintendo and elswhere in the early 80s.

PeaceTed 1 hour ago|

As much as we like to consider consoles as these closed exclusive tech kind of things, a lot of it was externally designed. With Genesis/Mega Drive, if a TMS9918 gets you most of the way there and it is better than what else is out at that time, then that is good enough.

When the goal is just to put pixels on screen at the pace of the scan line, a TI part will have solved most of the nagging base issues issues and it is easy to build on. No need for a clean room design.

djmips 1 hour ago||

Yes and that would be why Sega used it in the SG-1000. TI was no longer updating the VDP so later it was evolved in the Master System which was then evolved to the Genesis/Mega Drive. So to be clear the Genesis/Mega Drive did not have a TMS9918 inside just something that was similar enough to get a foothold into reverse engineering the actual VDP.

aledalgrande 6 hours ago||

Was just a few days ago in a shop in Den Den town in Osaka, where they still sell original Master System, NES and PS1 games, so many memories!

brabel 5 hours ago||

It was my second console after the Atari. It was a huge upgrade and we loved playing on it. The Mega Drive a few years later was my next one. In low income countries like Brazil they apparently still sell them new but licensed by a local manufacturer with another name I believe. It was so popular it still sells 30 years later.

pipes 5 hours ago|

Tectoy. They also kept releasing games way after the ms was dead else where. Oh and they did their own ms port of street fighter 2! https://segaretro.org/Street_Fighter_II%27

hnlmorg 3 hours ago||

There’s quite a few Tectoy ports of Sega games that were Genesis only everywhere else. Including games like Sonic Spinball.

The ironic thing is while Tectoy kept making MS games because it was cheap, those games now go for a small fortune (relatively speaking) in Europe because the were never exported out of Brazil.

toast0 3 hours ago||

Was the Sonic Spinball port much different than the Game Gear version? My understanding is the Game Gear port was by Sega and the two systems are very similar.

RetroSpark 1 hour ago||

You're right: many of TecToy's Brazil-exclusive Master System games were tweaked versions of Game Gear releases. That includes games like Ecco 2, Mortal Kombat 3 and Sonic Blast, but not the aforementioned Street Fighter II which they developed independently.

I think the Master System version of Sonic Spinball came from Sega themselves though. It was sold in Europe as well as Brazil.

kawsper 5 hours ago||

Maybe it is nostalgia speaking, but the SMS had a great sound chip, and some amazing composers.

My absolute favourite song is from Ninja Gaiden "Escape in a forest" (starts at 03:36) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFoA0OICiB4&t=207s

Someone played that song with real instruments, and it's also amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arun9KuXImk

epcoa 5 hours ago||

Probably a little nostalgia. The SMS sound chip is one of the cheapest and most primitive jellybean sound chip of the era (only 3 square waves, noise and no envelope generator either). That isn’t to say appreciating the art of doing more with less isn’t valid. It’s sort of like a MS Paint type of thing though.

allenu 5 hours ago||

I agree. I had an SMS growing up and always noticed the music sounded "cheaper" than the NES, almost childish. I think it really was just the square waves making everything sound the same. The NES had more interesting output with its triangle and sawtooth wave output and it gave it more edge and character.

djmips 45 minutes ago|||

It may not have had a sawtooth but it did have the DMC (sample channel) which although very quirky could create a lot of variety - and used melodically to give you, for instance, a sampled bass - or drums - or an orchestral hit!

allenu 10 minutes ago||

Ooh yeah, the DMC must've been used in the Super Mario 3 soundtrack. I remember the steel drums (?) in that sounded so good for an 8-bit game.

mr_johnson22 4 hours ago|||

The NES' own sound chip didn't have a sawtooth channel, but some games had an onboard sound chip that added one, like Konami's VRC6: https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/VRC6_audio

airstrike 5 hours ago|||

It was cheap AF but that ends up giving it a specific aesthetic...

My all time favorite is the opening to Alex Kidd in Shinobi World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dx9AAKm6dI

makeitdouble 4 hours ago||

> great sound chip, and some amazing composers.

I understand it as more of the latter than the former.

Hardware might not have been great, but they were dedicated to push it to the extreme limits of what it could do, and all of it was punching way above its weight in all respects.

Japanese companies saw an opening, and extremely brilliant people went in head first, sleeping under their desk to leave their mark in the field.

CuriouslyC 2 hours ago||

I got this console when I was a kid just for Phantasy Star. It's unquestionably the best 8 bit RPG, and the weak sequels disappointed me constantly growing up.

BirAdam 3 hours ago|

After reading this, I just have the Alex Kidd In Miracle World theme going over and over in my head.