Oooh nice. That's a fairly recent add I think but I haven't looked in a couple years. Surprised it's $10 though.
Oooh nice. That's a fairly recent add I think but I haven't looked in a couple years. Surprised it's $10 though.
That's cause it's the Kindle version!Originally Posted by Tanooki
Go you one better, when SEGA was bringing the Genesis to market, they also inquired with Atari, who couldn't get that deal done either. Nintendo dealt with Atari (Warner Bros.) while SEGA with Atari (Tramiel).
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Limited budget? :P I mean they did need to support the console pretty much ENTIRELY by themselves.
Maybe I'm just too young to remember but I don't remember ever seeing an SMS commercial in America. Especially before the Tonka takeover.
And understandably once Sega got the rights back they'd want to focus their advertising dollars on the Genesis before the SNES was released.
What I mean is that, when taking into consideration the idea that Nintendo went with the sprite artwork on the early releases to distance themselves from these lavish imaginative watercolor paintings on VCS games, Sega went with extremely basic/conservative (and lame) artwork. Comparing the art on early games and their Japanese Mark III boxes is like night and day, much like Famicom releases.
Around '87 or so Sega still had the white grid pattern but finally allowed some real artwork to be on the box, along with the game's name actually written in a way it is on the title screen or promotional material and not just Times New Roman (or whatever bland font they used). Once they started branching out and showing real art (Kenseiden, Spy VS Spy, Double Dragon, etc) it makes shit like Black Belt, Astro Warrior, and Wonder Boy even more hideous.
I'd like to have seen Sega's take on a sprite-based cover like the NES black label series. Can you imagine how awesome Black Belt would have been using those huge detailed characters from the boss fights or Enduro Racer on that gorgeous canyon level?
I thought Tonka was there from the beginning, and that the atrocious blue graph paper was their idea. Not so?
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
From what I read, SMS launched in 1986, Tonka got the rights around 1988 and Sega bought back the rights about 1990.
Sega definately didn't have the best cover art, ironically too the graphics were usually superior on the SMS. Where Nintendo had them beat was in the sheer amount of fantastic games. I honestly think the Master System was underrated, and didn't get the chance to shine the way it could have, mainly due to Nintendo having the monopoly on developers. Had Sega had the developers on their side the way they did for the Genesis, the Master System woulda looked way different. Although the pause button being on the console? Idk wat they were thinking. I suppose it was all new territory at that point, tho, so u can't blame em too much.
I generally disagree with the argument that SMS is better in any regard than the NES. In my opinion the SMS was just a copycat system rushed out to compete with the NES. They put the pause button on the system because they diddnt want the controller to be exactly like the NES controller. They packaged it with a light phaser and safari hunt in response to the NES Zapper and Duck Hunt.
People say SMS has better graphics but I disagree. To say they are superior is a huge stretch. Not one game on SMS even comes close to Kirby's Adventure in terms of graphics or sound.
To be fair, neither did most NES games. It's possible something comparable would have appeared eventually if the SMS had the same kind of lifespan and developer support.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
While I agree with your first point (the SMS is a copycat probably rushed to compete with the NES,) you got your chronology wrong: The pause button was put on the system because it retained full backward compatibility with the SG-1000, which had a pause button on the system. The SG-1000 was released on the same day as the Famicom (thus it being exceedingly unlikely Sega could copy Nintendo for their SG-1000 system or controller design, or vice-versa.) Too bad Sega didn't add buttons to their SMS design, but if you compare the 1st-gen SG-1000 controller with that of the SG-1000 II and SMS, you'll see that they did blatantly copy the Famicom paradigm.
I'd say in terms of colour richness, several SMS games surpass Kirby, namely the fighting scenes in Phantasy Star, and a whole slew of graphics in the various Mickey Mouse and Asterix games on the SMS. Also the word & concept of "superior" cannot be stretched: either something is inferior, equal, or superior. There's no exaggeration possible with these words.
There were SMS game release in the mid 90s. I dont think something comparable to the better NES games even could have come along, and besides nothing did.
SMS games all feel slow and choppy. I used Kirby's Adventure as an example because Kirby's Adventure has many frames of sprite animation creating a much better looking game.
I disagree that phantasy star looks better, you could argue that SMS has a larger color palette but I dont think SMS games look more colorful than NES games.
Also, instead of using the word 'stretch' I should have said "Saying that SMS graphics look better than NES games is a huge exaggeration".
Last edited by bb_hood; 08-27-2014 at 09:59 AM.
But that creates the same problem. A comparative like "better" can either be true or untrue; not exaggerated.
Didn't games like Mario 3 and Kirby's Adventure have additional graphics processing chips built into the carts for additional graphics fidelity?
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They did not. The only thing they really added other than basic memory mapping was an IRQ timer (mostly for allowing mid-frame ROM bank swaps).
MMC2 (Punch-Out!!) and MMC4 (Famicom Wars and Fire Emblem) it seems allowed mid-scanline bank swaps.
The only chip I think that actually did something to increase the graphics capability was MMC5 and that was only used by Castlevania III, Laser Invasion and I think every Koei game.
(additional VRAM that could be used as a third nametable, or allowing games to assign a palette to every 8x8 tile, wheras normally every 2 tile by 2 tile (16 pixels by 16 pixels) needs to use the same palette).
Although some games had extra VRAM to allow four nametables (for a full 2 screen wide by 2 tall buffer, compared to normally only having 2 screens total) but supposedly they couldn't have additional main RAM (for saving or otherwise) with it for some reason.
SMS games looked and played better, especially the European-only releases. Kirby's Adventure looks ok for a NES console though, it couldn't have done better. SMS did.
Also, the SMS looked a better quality console when compared to the ugly grey NES console.
Last edited by tom; 08-27-2014 at 04:34 PM.
Well thats your opinion,
What about Tyson's Punchout? Way better looking and much more fast paced than either Buster Douglas or Rocky.
Personally I think the NES system looks awesome.
Also the music on any and every master system game is total garbage. For that reason alone the NES is just better.
Fair enough, but I suspect none of them had the kind of highly-paid, quality developers behind them as Kirby's Adventure.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." --Bertrand Russel (attributed)
I wouldn't say that. I had an SMS for awhile, got rid of it maybe a year ago doing some nice trading and stuff and I did import around a half dozen UK titles, some exclusive like Streets of Rage which rightly impressed me as did Golden Axe Warrior which made it here. I had others like the Sonic titles, the castlevania clone the name escapes me. I did research with others including spendy stuff too like Power Strike 2, Streets of Rage 2, the conversion of Dynamite Headdy. The SMS we got, most of it was mid-life NES in quality in the audio/visual dept and even the quality of the game play itself, but much of what we had was pretty crusty as they bailed on it realistically once the Genesis hit in 89. If you look to UK or really Brazil, there's stuff that in play quality, audio and visuals rivals some of the NES best but those mostly were smartly well converted GG and Genesis titles. I think when you toss in the MMC5, MMC2, and the quirky Famicom stuff especialy the VRC family from Capcom and some that Sunsoft did (gimmick mapper) along even with the no mapper (look it up in game play) Moon Crystal -- the SMS loses but not vastly.
Ok, Kirby's Adventure is a good arguement. And it, in many ways, was a copycat system, but it did display more colors then the NES. I'm still much more into the NES, tho, so I'm with u, trust me. But a game like Kirby's Adventure is one of those games that pushes the limits of the system, and it's one of my fav games of alltime, but I was just making the arguement that perhaps the Master System had more support, there'd be games like Kirby's Adventure that would really show wat the system could do. Again, I love Kirby, and the NES is still my #1 system.
The Xbox was superior in specs to the PS2, but the PS2 is def far superior in games, and I much prefer the PS2, so I'm not saying it's just specs for me.
Copycat system or not, the master system really was a solid system. It was a toploader unlike the NES, and my NES does not work while my SMS works great, so there's that. I mean, I own, I think, 163 NES games and 5 SMS games tho, so I'm a total NES guy. But the Master System is still great. It just lacks the laundry list of great games that the NES had, sadly.
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