The power gap between the NES and Master System, and how it didn’t mean anything in the real world

[Gameguy]

I think graphically and game play-wise, SMS Castle of Illusion (which is quite different from the Genesis) compares well with the best of NES platformers. It's really good.

I've heard that a lot of SMS games are ports of Game Gear versions, I'm not sure if that applies to Castle of Illusion or not. If I ever come across a copy locally for cheap I'll try it out.

I have a great example for this: Double Dragon. SMS DD looks amazing... in screen shots. But when you play it's a flickering poorly controlling mess. Despite being single player, NES Double Dragon actually plays better, and looks fine given the era in which it was released.

Thank you, that's pretty much my experience with SMS Double Dragon as well. So many people say that the SMS version is better because it's closer to the arcade version and there's no control issues, but I just find it plays badly. I'm not sure if it's due to the controller or if it's actually the game though, I find the SMS controller pretty bad to control in general.