Got an SMS a year or two ago and it's worked just fine so far but I'd never tried a card until this week. I picked up a copy of Ghost House from a respectable retro store that looks pretty clean but the system just pretends nothing is inserted (if there's a cartridge in the machine at the same time it boots the cartridge, otherwise it goes to the How To screen).

What should I try on my system before taking the game back to the store? Do I need to open up the whole thing to do any cleaning?

I have this, boxed with a complete manual, will it ever fetch more than £90? Or is it best to hold onto it for a while?

I've got a pretty rad DIY Master System controller situation going on here: It's an 8bit DIY NES board in a Boxy Pixel black aluminum controller shell, paired with a BlueRetro DB9 Master System Adapter. I designed a decal for the shell that looks as close to the Master System controller as I could get it. Finally, I configured the BlueRetro adapter to send Left and Right D-pad inputs simultaneously from the Select button, so I can trigger save states on the Everdrive easily without doing it on accident.

There's just one thing left to do before this controller setup reaches perfection: A pause mod triggered by the Start button on the NES controller. Only one problem: I can't figure out exactly how to go about doing it with the the 8bitdo NES board in combo with the BlueRetro adapter. I've found a lot of tutorials for wired controllers, but the wireless setup is confusing me. It seems like, with the built-in Start button and the ability to configure what the Start button does via the BlueRetro Web Config, that I might be able to get away with a less complicated circuit mod, but really what's happening is the paradox of choice is just confusing and paralyzing me.

Anyone have any guidance on how I should configure my pause mod with this combo of gear?

I was always fascinated by the Master System having dual game formats like the cartridge and the card. I owned SMS cartridges as a kid but never got around to buying any card games.

Lately, I find that I’m now collecting card games just because I think the format is just so cool and different because the system was designed to play both formats. Yes, the card games aren’t the greatest of games, but they’re like a time capsule into a cool era of video games where, at a time, gaming looked to be on its last legs. Anyway, just wanted to show off my humble, teeny collection of card games for fans of the SMS so that they’re also not forgotten.

Hokay.. this will be my next little review of an SMS game. And let me warn you. If you really like Phantasy Star 1 and consider it a true gem of retro gaming... you may end up frustrated by what I have to say. But hear me out.

Phantasy Star 1 is very much like Dragon Quest, using the same system that DQ introduced. The main difference is the visuals. Phantasy Star 1 introduces some of the best, most elaborate JRPG graphics, best of 8-bit era, hands down. The backgrounds are beautiful and the monsters have little animations when attacking and they are sometimes pretty smooth for an old JRPG. The music is also pretty catchy and IMHO really decent, better than DQ 1-2.

However, the battle system and battle mechanics are significantly simplified compared even to Dragon Quest 2, which was released on the NES a year before Phantasy Star 1, not to mention DQ3 which was miles ahead:

1. No classes. No multiclassing. The cool and elaborate mix-and-match party building from DQ3 is nonexistent here. What you get is something like DQ2, where you get a warrior, a mage, etc.
2. Very few spells (a few combats spells per spellcasting characters) and most spells are actually heavily useless. Even Noah, the mage, has little mana, around 90 I believe around the level 30, which is the level cap? And spells like Thunder, well, they do 30 damage to every enemy... for 16 mana. And you will fight dozens, maybe even hundreds of enemies per dungeon, so those kinds of spells will not take you anywhere. Or how about "WALL" or "PROT" which make you immune to attacks... unless the attackers are powerful, because that makes the protection vanish instantly? Like, wtf? Next, a binding (ROPE) or paralyzing (FEAR) spell that actually works only vs. a single enemy (or a single one in a group)...and FAILS most of the time... and still costs 2 mana? The protagonist has got 30 mana, and that's about it... ugh...
3. If you add the two together, you get DQ1-esque combat, which means, either you have the stats to comfortably beat enemies, or you're walled by them and killed quickly due to insufficient defense.
4. Ok, I lied about the comfort. Even 220+ DEF Alis would get hit for 10-12 damage by some lowly eyeball enemies or jellies with 10 HP sometimes. The damage range doesn't go low enough to make fodder meaningless. You can lose a fair bit of HP there...
5. ...and you'll fight a lot of fodder because there's plenty of backtracking, back-and-forth movement or searcing/exploring. And "RUN" usually works.. until it doesn't, five times in a row.
6. And what happens when escaping doesn't work? all enemies get a free turn against you. And those little nice attack animations, well, they will REALLY start getting on your nerves. 6 jelly enemies, you fail to escape, and each of them attacks for like 5 seconds, so 30 seconds of wait just to get another chance to flee from a TRASH ENCOUNTER... you wanna fight them? Well sure, but here's the problem, with no "SPEED" attribute, the order in the battle is RANDOM, you may end up watching like 2-3 of them attacking you anyway, so it's like 20 seconds wasted on some random trash enemy anyway....
7. Which heavily contributes to the feeling of a waste of time. The game loves to waste your time. The encounter rate isn't really higher than in Dragon Quest games, but becuase everything is so slow, it's an excercise in tedium. Sometimes you just want to explore but nooo, there's 43842803 fights you don't care about along the way wasting like half an hour in total just on the animations alone.
8. And even worse. A strong enemy, like say the Centaur, which is a serious threat to low-level, underequipped party, gives 30 (or 32) EXP and like... 150 gold? Now, a couple of low level jellies or scorps or whateever will ALSO give you like 30 EXP while being a couple magnitudes easier. And a group of Barbarians on the desert planet will give you around 500 gold, and they are weaklings. The challenge/reward in this game is competely off, stronger enemies are an obstacle, but they are not efficient for grinding, neither EXP nor GOLD.
9. The game expects you to draw your own maps. I love drawing maps. However, the game's dungeons are pretty convoluted and, let's be honest, there's way too many, and they are pretty much exactly the same every time. I love the little pseudo 3D effect but those things are effectively the same, every single time - and the rewards for exploring them are mostly pitiful, except the final dungeons that offer Laconian gear which you pretty much need to beat the game.
10. FInal problem. The game likes to outright lie to you. "There's a secret passage to the west of Parolit", the game says. Only that it's not true. The secret passage is not west. It's directly north, at the starport. I wasted 20 mins looking for it on the worldmap and simply did not expect it to be somewhere competely different. I usually try to beat games without guides, but when the game starts lying to me, I usually just go dirty.

In the end, I did check a few things, but I mostly beat the game on my own without walkthroughs. Here's what I googled:

1. the passage mentioned above
2. Hovercraft's location (that's because the game will not let you find the Hovercraft until you answer "YES" when asked by some random dude on another planet if you've ever heard of a hovercraft. Now I said "NO" since it was the first time I was asked in-game about it, and just moved on after getting an answer, but noo, you need to actually say "YES" to make the howercraft findable. UGH.
3. How to use the ice digger. I half expected it to work on some blocks only, but it works on a selected few ONLY and it's extremely non-obvious.
4. The location of the floating castle. That's because I missed the city where you're given an elaborate clue. So I was kinda in the dark here. My bad. The city ain't hard to find, but it's in the middle of water, and with no ingame map, it's hard to assess which parts of water you explored and which parts did you not.
5. the very final sub-level of the notorious Baya Malay dungeon. My bad though. I made a blooper and erroneously drew a wall while mapping - and there was none. Funny part is that I mapped the 12 dungeon steps before it. Sigh.
6. The location of the hidden door in the final dungeon. I was heavily expecting it to be where it was, but I was tired and totally done with this game and going step-by-step, going into menu, searching for stuff and getting attacked by 487503240895 random enemies along the way was really not my definition of fun.

In the end, I was really tired after beating this game. Drained. It felt way too tedious, way too repetitive, and some design choices were highly questionable to me. The combat system wasn't up to even DQ2's tactical approach, and obviously nowhere near DQ3, being (way) too simple to me, to a point where you either have the stats to break through, or you don't. And there was so much little stuff that wasted my time that I was like, totally done. I love JRPGs, and I enjoyed this game quite a lot in the earlier parts, but the tedium ultimately defeated the joy.

All my party members were at level 25 upon beating the final boss.

4/10. Sorry. I like the ambitious parts of this game, the polish, the overall retro feel, but at the end, I just wanted it to end, and I didn't care anymore.

It took a week!

Mostly because I did it the hard way, haha.

I recently ordered a Master System II on eBay with a controller, official power supply and some random 9 pin din/RCA cable. It was listed as tested working and I had some vouchers so it worked out pretty cheap.

When it arrived I plugged it all into where my other Master System II was set up using my already known good cables and power and turned it on.

It loads the SEGA logo and then just goes to a blank screen and does nothing else.

I wasn't really thinking and tried out a few games and they all had the same issue. SEGA logo then black screen. Wonder Boy, Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 all the same.

I next tried a flash cart and it showed the SEGA logo and then loaded into the menu to select a game to load.

I chose a known working rom (Aleste), and it showed the usual messages (Do not turn of console, erase ... , write .... etc) but then just stayed on that screen indefinitely.

I eventually rebooted and tried another rom (Montezuma's Revenge) and it was the same. Except this time the background colour changed just before it froze but still had all the text from the rom loading.

I tried a rom from the SG1000 SC3000 folder (Bombjack I believe) and it showed the usual rom loading messages and then a garbled looking SEGA logo and it froze on that screen.

I tried my cartridge of Wonder Boy and it froze on a black screen again after the SEGA logo. I tried Sonic 2 and it actually showed some message I can't remember about not recognizing the cartridge.

It was at this point I decided to have a look at the cartridge slot, I know I should have done that before I even turned it on. I was at that tired point where you don't really think straight.

The cartridge slot had a few white thick hairs wedged in that I plucked out with some tweezers and I cleaned it it with some IPA.

While I was poking around through the cartridge slot (I didn't take it apart) I could clearly see that one of the ceramic capacitors was bent out of place and broken. Compared it to my other console and the one in there was tucked out of site rather then bent over.

Gave the console a good shake and there was nothing rattling around inside and I'm fairly certain I would have felt the resistance anyway when trying to insert a cartridge. So I believe it arrived this way. There was also no evidence of any tiny broken ceramic parts inside of the box or bubble wrap it came delivered in. I've reached out to the seller (Nearly 30K sales and 99.9% good reviews) but it is the weekend here now and I don't expect to hear back until next week. I have everything wrapped back up how I received it and put aside for now.

My question that I put to the people much more knowledgeable then myself is do you think that a broken 270 PF 50V Ceramic capacitor at C24 is likely to be the only thing wrong that could be causing the issue or is there likely to be something else hidden away inside that may also be damaged?

I honestly believe that the seller has plugged it in using different cables and seen the SEGA logo and turned it off and marked it down as tested working and much later on bundled it up with the incorrect video cable and listed it without knowing it was broken.

If that is the only issue I might try and get a partial refund or whatever and try and fix it myself. I've just recently bought everything needed to do just that kind of thing anyway and also a bunch of cheap learn to solder kits from AliExpress to practice on. If it's fried something else by being broken and then turned on and off a dozen or so times then I should probably return it right? But the way it loads the SEGA logo before malfunctioning and also that it can navigate the menus of the flash cart no problem gives me hope.

Fingers crossed that it's only a 0.03 cent fix.

https://preview.redd.it/k9sdpmcdz91e1.jpg?width=3307&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b1f186afd3081493067e39af2c2bf0d196bb575

https://preview.redd.it/yqfo0bedz91e1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5cab4c896374ec09476ed0b5d64982a6f4dea612

After beating Power Strike/Aleste (https://www.reddit.com/r/MasterSystem/comments/1gm5c3k/power\_strikealeste\_zanac\_meets\_the\_master\_system/), I was cautiously optimistic towards its sequel. However, what I experienced wasn't just an improved Power Strike. It felt like an entirely different Shmup, on the foundation of a classical Compile shooter, of course (and that's a good thing, Compile was fantastic in its coding) - but improved a lot.

Compared to Power Strike (which was a reskinned Zanac), the game is just wayyyy better. It still has great presentation (even better than PS1) and fantastic music, but it also gets rid of many design choices from Zanac that just were dragging the gameplay down:

1. The bosses are huge, beautiful and are no longer the boring "Compile Boss Tiles Galore" known from every other Compile Shmup. They are also fairly interesting to fight, actually, each of them does some unique gimmick.
2. You can manually set your craft's speed ingame. Great choice, sometimes you want precision, sometimes you want speed - you can have whatever you need without fishing for upgrades.
3. There's a difficulty setting (though admittedly not very useful, because the difficulty 1 is bugged, and is harder than difficulty 2, despite what the manual says - and 3-5 are just adding difficulty on top). This can make it apply to a broader audience, though it's not an easy shmup - but it's not that hard, either. Definitively easier than Zanac and Power Strike on the default setting, I'd say it's easier than Gradius 1-2, Life Force, and a little harder than the lesser-known game that I consider the champion of 8-but Shmups... Crisis Force for the Famicon. Harder than Gun Nac, Guardian Legend, Over Horizon and Burai Fighter.
4. Upon death, you only lose half of your weapon's power level, rounded up, so recovering is actually possible and doable. You also pre-select your special weapon and not fish for it - you also keep it when you die, which makes it easier to actually use strategy.
5. Continue doesn't take you 1-2 levels back if used on the last level, like in Zanac/Power strike.
6. Weapons are balanced better and selecting them depending on the level/boss is part of the strategy, you no longer need to fanatically cling to the most OP one to have a chance.
7. There's a "panic button" known from shmups of later generations (that destroys bullets and damages enemy ships), although not mapped well (it assumes you continuously fire and gets released when you let go of the "shoot" button... which is awkward, but with so few buttons, I guess they couldn't figure out a better way. This is a great addition and every Shmup benefits from this, it takes the gameplay to another level.
8. Compared to Power Strike, most of the slowdown is gone - even though the game looks better. It very rarely slows down, Compile optimized it well.

There's also 7 levels + "stage 8" (a boss), they are fairly long but don't feel dragged out, unlike Power Strike 1's levels. You also don't need to face 3 minibosses and 4 bosses on final levels, which makes the game have a better flow.

I actually REALLY liked it and enjoyed every second. I usually go for a no-death run on highest difficulty when I like the shmup, but since (at the time of writing this review) I have some flu or whatever, I don't have the mental capacity needed for this. And I have nothing to prove anyway, I already no-death'd Zanac and Power Strike 1, so whatever. On my first few playthroughs I got to level 8 without continuing, screwed up on the final boss (ugh) and had to continue to beat him. I also played on Normal difficulty, so things weren't as wild as I usually experience.

But still, it was great.

I'd rate it 8/10, the same as Crisis Force on the NES, if only it wasn't for two problems....

1. SO MUCH TIME is spent on DODGING UPGRADES so that you don't change your weapon, that it almost feel like a 2nd game within a game. It's truly awful, in PS1 and Zanac, weapons would fly upwards, but in this game, they gravitate towards the bottom of the screen, sometimes even denying you a part of the screen - and you have to decide whether it's better to risk it in a poor position, or move towards a better position while changing your weapon to something you don't want to use... ugh. This is a major flaw of this game and I felt really annoyed by it. I'd rather have the upgrades stay around the middle of the screen for a while and then fly UP, this would give you more space to manouver.
2. Some mild visibility issues. At certain stages (I think 5 is the worst in that regard), I struggled to notice the bullets, since they would blend with the backgrounds. It's nowhere near as bad as in Zanac, but it's there. And it's annoying.

Thus, I think I'll keep Crisis Force as my no1 8-bit SHMUP, but this one is easily the second best with a solid 7/10.

Check it out!

https://preview.redd.it/vni1926urxzd1.png?width=649&format=png&auto=webp&s=737790a9434bf5b1fd2003bae15875ee6f1f41ad

Hello guys 👍

By any change anyone here knows how to get or build one of these sega master system usb-c connectors?

https://preview.redd.it/g5h5wasf9ozd1.png?width=906&format=png&auto=webp&s=064b4c0325e534682335bf2da3e9fc6b25da30ae

This would be awesome, I could plug and play any USB-C joystick, even the 2.4g with very low latency!

Here is the link I found:

https://x.com/zen_nif/status/1854481803043827758

I recently picked up a Sega Sports Pad, and while the trackball hasn’t yellowed as much as as many others I’ve seen, it’s still like to restore it to its former glory if I can.

Has anyone here tried the retrobrighting process on the trackball? I’m worried that if the process damages or alters the surface in any way, that the trackball won’t roll smoothly anymore. Functionality > shiny bright white!

Compile shooters... you played one of them, you played all of them. Still - in the early 8-bit era, Compile shooters set a new standard for home console shmups with the non-stop action and high difficulty. Zanac for the NES was the first, released in 1987 for the NES.

Zanac deserves a mention - it's the hardest game I've ever beat. And - yeah, sue me, gotta brag here - I beat it on a single life, too. If someone says Battletoads, Ghosts and Goblins, etc. is the hardest 8-bit game - i instantly nope. Zanac. This is the one game that took me three weeks of meticulous planning, playing, plotting my paths and exploiting every possible mechanic I could find. Till this day, this is my proudest retro gaming achievement.

Why do I mention Zanac so much? No, not because being an NES fanboy (I've been accused of being one already). it's because Power Strike (AKA Aleste) is essentially a Master System port of Zanac, released in 1988 (around 12 months after Zanac) with multiple changes of course. Still - it's unmistakingly Zanac, it shares most of the game's concepts (such as... "aggression levels", bases made of tiles, 8 weapon system with upgrades, many enemies/minibosses, hell, even the life-up tune is exactly the same.

The key differences are... and I'm sorry, but many of those will NOT be in Power Strike/Aleste's favor...

1. Beautiful graphics compared to Zanac's very sterile presentation..
2. RIDICULOUS slowdowns, I mean, Zanac was sterile but butter-smooth in gameplay, no matter how many bullets were on the screen. This game though, it slows down to a crawl with many bullets on the screen, I think it like drops down to 50% of original speed, or even less.
3. Half of Zanac's levels. Which can be viewed as a positive because the game lasts around 30 minutes (which is a lot for a Shmup) and Zanac took like 60 (!) without warps - which highly contributed to the ridiculous difficulty...
4. Half of Zanac's enemy types - Valkyries, T-cells, Golgos, Degids - all gone. Which can also be seen as a positive, seeing that they were the strongest/most annoying enemies in Zanac, but... they were also pretty unique.
5. Half of Zanac's minibosses (capital ships). You're probably seeing a pattern here....
6. Less upgrades (only 3 per weapon - Zanac went up to... uhh, I think 8 with the laser?), lack of weapon-speedup system (or, Red Landers), lack of 1-ups (blue landers), lack of erasers or fairies (those would clear the screen for you instantly, and fairies would beat a boss right away as well). I could probably find some more "LESS OF", but the point is - less of pretty much everything.

So basically... despite all the love this game got, it's essentially half of Zanac. Now, Zanac was arguably bloated. Too long, too ridiculous. However, by removing vast majority of complex enemies, what's left is mostly plowing thorugh the game with guns blazing, little to none manouvers required.

And I'm serious about it. Plowing through. The game has a reputation of unforgiving difficulty. But do yourself a favor. Get weapon 1 (the starting weapon) upgraded to level 3, park at the bottom of the screen, press the 1+2 buttons and never let go. You will be genuinely surprised - if you didn't know - that this is essentially very close to being invulnerable, because you will destroy pretty much everything, from enemies to bullets, without doing anything. I mean, I passed stage 5 once while literally not looking at the screen, excluding the minibosses/bosses... lol. Now, if you play "as intended", swapping weapons, dodging bullets... well, expect it to be hell. Nothing short of it. Remember, the enemy spawning pattern is (mostly) random. You can't just learn your way, like you can with Gradius, by learning what spawns where. Not in this game, buddy.

Much like in Zanac, the weapons are poorly balanced, but what's worse - they spawn very rarely, and most is actually on a tight timer, usually 80 seconds. But 80 seconds is not enough for a full ingame rotation of weapon spawns, meaning, unless there's a pre-placed weapon you want to keep somewhere on the level, you will run out of it and be forced to use the unupgraded pea shooter. Which is basically useless. And that is death. Swift and painless. This is why I think weapon 1 is the only usable weapon in this game. Because it has no timer. Yep! And it destroys enemy bullets. And its projectiles have huge hitbox, much bigger than in-game sprite suggests, covering your sides and heavily contributing to the "just hold buttons and fly through" strategy. Why was Zanac better here? Because you could stick to your weapon of choice. The spawns were more frequent and you could easily get refills.

Speaking about death. This game, while allowing the player to just sort-of drift through the levels, is also very unforgiving if you die. Because, just like Zanac, it uses an "aggression system" that, depending on your actions (such as holding the fire buttons continously, scoring kills or getting upgrades), cranks up the amount and quality of enemy ships spawning. This is (supposedly) meant to help the player upon death, by reducing enemy strength and frequency. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work as advertised - it sometimes takes multiple deaths to lower aggression level to something which can be managed with stock pea shooter - and the player is unlikely to have many lives. Worse! there are pre-defined enemies on each level that are there IN ADDITION to the randomly generated ones, and those do NOT get reduced in any way. Neither do minibosses/bases. If you die on a base, it's essentially instant game over. Think Gradius... no, think Zanac.

And the ultimate offense - if you lose all lives on the final level, back to penultimate level you go upon continuing. That's right, they kept what made Zanac so infuriating - and it's the same here. It totally doesn't help that levels 5+6 are longest, riddled with bosses and extremely dense with enemy spawns.

Sounds awful? Because it is. The only comfortable way of playing this game is to... not die at all. Which is exactly what I did. Just like Zanac, I beat this game on a single life. Because, in a twisted way, it's easier than actually trying to pull of levels 5+6 on a continue. Lol.

Now, Power Strike/Aleste is easier than Zanac. A lot. Shorter. Simpler. And ultimately - and in my opinion - worse. But it's still playable, and if you don't know the strategies, you will frantically attempt to dodge the near-infinite amount of waves and bullets being thrown at you at all directions. If this sounds like "Bullet Hell" genre to you - it kinda is. Zanac (and, by extension, Power Strike/Aleste) is a shmup/bullethell hybrid. Which is ironic, because Zanac's creator considers "Bullet Hell" genre to be crap. Huh. Frankly, so do I (this is why I was never interested in Recca'93, for instance). And you usually don't beat Bullet hell games by inhuman spatial awareness. You beat them by exploiting safe zones and proper weaponry. And that's the way here as well.

There is not much "ingame knowledge" left in the internet for this game (just like Zanac). so you won't just follow a guide and beat it. I mean, there are some things on gamefaqs but they will not teach you how to play, so they are pretty useless. You have to learn it the hard way. Yourself. (oh, there's the Zanac strategy wiki - but, as you might have guessed, parts of it were actually written by me, lol). Which would be essentially everything a retro gamer may want for challenge. However, Power Strike just isn't up to par compared to Zanac and feels like its neutered sibling. It is still playable, but.. if you want this kind of gaming hell, just play Zanac, buddy. I'm sorry, there will be probably more UGHH YOU NES FANBOY comments here, but that's the way it is.

5/10

On the positive note, however, Compile clearly learned from games like Zanac, Aleste and Golvellius, because their NES action-shmup hybrid, "Guardian Legend", was one of the best 8-bit games ever.

Post scriptum: The only way I can prove I beat this game as described is through the screenshot taken right after I beat the final boss. Some people may say "who cares dude", but I feel validation is important whenever someone makes bold claims. Finished the game with 45 lives remaining. Yay. Even though this doesn't exactly prove a no-death run (as I could have died, idk, right at level 1, and still accumulate lives later), but you can at least acknowledge that I did pretty good, haha.

https://preview.redd.it/1h5dbn21hkzd1.png?width=824&format=png&auto=webp&s=e9ffb08be649cd6db63491de5b1a7d96df3cec52

Oi, galera do r/MasterSystem!

Estou empolgado para compartilhar um projeto que foi super divertido de fazer: meu livro "Jogos que influenciaram gerações: Master System." 📚✨ Neste eBook, eu compilei uma coletânea com mais de 100 dos principais jogos lançados para o Master System, cada um com uma análise detalhada e imagens que capturam toda a nostalgia.

Se você é fã desse console icônico, vai adorar revisitar esses clássicos e descobrir curiosidades sobre eles. E a melhor parte? Se você tem o Kindle ou está no Kindle Unlimited, pode ler GRATUITAMENTE! 🙌

Estou realmente ansioso para ouvir o que vocês acham. Por favor, deixem comentários ou feedback! Aqui está o link para conferir o livro: Jogos que influenciaram gerações: Master System.

Obrigado e espero que vocês curtam a leitura!

I really liked NG trilogy on the NES.

The first one was the epitome of action adventure on NES to me. The speed, challenge, music, design, cutscenes - it felt THE ninja game of NES. Parts 2 introduced gimmicks (wind, ice, etc.) which slowed the gameplay down. NG3 did away with the ever respawning enemies, which also slowed down the tempo. Both of which I found unnecessary. I liked all three, but the first one was unbeatable in what it delivered.

I liked it so much that I beat all three games without dying once.

And then I learned that there's a SMS NG game - so I naturally had to play it.

It's graphically excellent, very fluent and has impeccable controls (something that was a SERIOUS problem for many SMS games - I mean, how did they screw up the controls so much in so many games? Think Alex the Kidd in Miracle World or Lucky Dime Caper - those games are just so bad in terms of controls, and that's not even factoring in the crappy controller...). You have, just like in the NES game, perfect control of Ryu, and all failures are your own. The levels are (as per NG fashion) beautiful.

The music feels not as good as in the NES trilogy, but it is decent - and way above average for SMS which suffered from many crappy audio cues. I mean, just take Shinobi as an example - a "standard music" which is like 30 seconds long loop, a boss music, and ... ummm.... I honestly don't remember anything else. Lol. SMS NG brings the traditional NG quality here - more or less memorable tune for every level, menu, intro and ending, with level 7 music being my favorite.

There are, however, some rough parts.

First of all - the game is bugged! If you reach 999 mana (ninpo?), you actually overflow the stack and your energy becomes infinite. Yeah, you can just run through levels with fireshield ON from here and just godmode through the game...

The difficulty has been severly toned down too, and while I understand that this was something meant to bring NG to a wider audience - this is Ninja Gaiden, it's expected to be challenging. SMS NG isn't. Levels seem shorter, you take less damage from enemies, health recovery drops are omnipresent, you have unlimited continues, you keep your weapons upon continuing, you keep your mana/ninpo while continuing (UGH) which heavily contributes to triggering the bug mentioned above even if you're not trying that hard, and the final boss has its own section, meaning, if you die on the final boss, you no longer have to replay the entire level.

Now, I really don't want to sound elitist here, but I expected something a little more... challenging? This is actually an easy game. I didn't even break a sweat. Took me an hour to beat it (on my 1st, blind playthrough) and I tried hard not to abuse the infinite mana/ninpo bug. The only unnecessarily frustrating parts were the three flames that would spawn on the ledges to knock you down - even the notorious birds of doom felt less threatening this time around. And the bosses were really, really easy. Not that NES NG bosses were hard (except maybe the final boss trio from NG1, but that's mostly because the 2nd phase requires you to master a certain kind of rhythm that isn't initially obvious, and the third phase actually has RNG in it). But this was just cakewalk. I believe Duck Tales bosses gave me more trouble, lol.

The level design itself also was a bit rough. It just didn't strike me as NG caliber. It was okay-ish, definitively above average, but certainly not as good as on the NES.

And finally - the cutscenes were replaced by stills, and significantly trimmed when it comes to the amount of text. While corny, NG1-3 had full blown plots, which was quite something for an action game on the NES. Here, it feels almost an afterthought. You beat a dude, he says were the next dude is, you beat the next dude, you learn where the Dude After The Next Dude is... and so on. Until you beat the final guy.

SMS NG is a good game, but it feels like an afterthought. It isn't as polished as NG 1-3 on the NES, but it still delivers that ninja magic at times. It's just not enough to elevate it to the NES NG standards.

6/10

(NG1: 8/10, NG2 and NG3: 7/10).

Oh yeah, and as always: played on real hardware, CRT TV, and no guides/FAQs were used. Not a fan of playing on PAL, but my console is modded so I can play both PAL and NTSC games on it, and to my knowledge, SMS NG was a Europe-only release.

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Following my Golden Axe Warrior impression post... https://www.reddit.com/r/MasterSystem/comments/1gh8f0d/

I beat the "other" Zelda clone as well. Real hardware, CRT TV and no walkthroughs. Like last time, drew my own map for maximum retro feels. Review below!

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I initially really hated it for a number of reasons:

- Let's start with problem number one - VERY SLOW movement of Kelesis...

- If you die, you go back to L14 tile, the starting point. And you have to trek all the way back to wherever you died. "Like Zelda" ? yeah, but in LoZ, you have better shortcuts and a transport system. And you move faster. Here, you have to do the walk of shame. And I believe you lose some gold as well...

- ... which is stupidly important in this game because it's a grinding game! Everything requires money. Even making your wallet larger (which is necessary because your pockets are very shallow initially), you need gold. And things are rather on the costly side. The weapons in particular.

- Also the game pretty much forces you to explore every tile, and there's 13x14 of them, little bit less than GAW's 15x15 tile map. BUT. Every single screen has some sort of secret hole. Most are worthless, but unfortunately, the "Bibles" (that deepen your pockets), heart containers ("Potions") and items required to progress the plot are all hidden there as well.

- How do you make the "secret holes" appear? you either kill a set amount of enemies (1-6) or hit the right spot (like, a rock or a tree) with your sword.

- However, since in the beginning you're pretty underpowered and enemies are fast and relentless and they NEVER stop spawning (up to 6 enemies per screen), you end up running around poking trees and stones with your sword, hoping to find the next plot-advancing item before you get ganged upon and killed yet again, forcing you to do another walk of shame...

- it's not that the combat is dificult, it's just that certain parts of the game have VERY badly placed enemies that are fast (skeletons, etc.) and do a ton of damage to you with the gear you're carrying at that point. The worst offender is the sea part containing Warlic's Dungeon. You're pretty underpowered there compared to those things that spawn there, but you have to find the Aqua Boots to advance the plot, and those things are actually hidden quite well... and VERY far from the starting point.

- Things get less frustrating with better items, the legendary sword in particular which is very powerful and finally allows you to clean enemies quickly...

- and grind quickly. With Aqua/Forest boots, you can just park on a tile enemies can't go to (like, a water tile vs. land based enemies) and just spam attack. Fortunately, there's no RNG, no "chance to drop rupee" nonsense. You kill something, you get gold. Every time. Still, it takes like 5 minutes of button pressing to accumulate 40k or 50k gold, and it's just a ridiculous waste of life.

- However, the Forest boots that practically allow you to bypass ALL terrain (other than mountains) are a welcome change of pace and allow you to freely move around. But you're still slow.

- The dungeons themselves are either a (Very simple) side scroller, or a (very simple) Shmup. I'm not a fan of those kind of genre mixes, it never worked well on 8-bit, you end up with half-assed platforming/shmup levels - and this game is no exception. But the worst offender? There are dead ends and if you hit one, you get kicked out of a dungeon. Missed a jump and landed on the lower path that ends with a dead end? well, tough luck buddy, try again! and again! and again. ugh. NOPE.

- At the end, there's a boss, which is usually very simple, including the final boss himself. The patterns are very simplistic and it doesn't take long to learn them. First few bosses are laughably easy, like, no-damage runs against them are trivial.

- As you can see, the game actively tries to be a douchebag with forced re-tries of dungeons, slow movement, walks of shame, grinding and forcing the player to meticulously check every screen for a secret hole. So many of those things are just bad game design. There are things that are retro, like having to draw your own map, and that's fine, that's part of the charm. But bad design choices aren't retro, they are just obsolete and are unnecessary - and WERE unnecessary 30 years ago as well.

- at least there are pretty much NO cryptic parts in this game. Even the last puzzle "Golvellius is here and there".... well, if you were thorough in exploration, there's literally only 1 screen remaining on the map where there was no secret hole to be found, so yeah... the final dungeon's not too hard to find, eh?

- However, once you get the legendary sword, boots of flight and the best pendant/shield for defense... the game actually feels pleasant for a change. Simplistic, yet pleasant. Which brings me to a point: if this game was actually fine-tuned, tested and somebody from the dev team actually PLAYED this game and saw that all those frustrating parts are just that - frustrating - it could have been so much better. But nobody did, and that's all what we got.

4/10. In case you haven't read my Golden Axe Warrior review - that one is 6/10, way better, mostly because it's just much less annoying. Music is a saving grace - it's actually way better than what most SMS games provide for music and a proof that Master System WAS capable of great sounding tunes, rivalling the NES and that it's not the hardware's fault that most SMS games have short, shitty tunes that loop after 10 seconds.

But wait, even music is sort of screwed up. The music changes while you get a new sword or shield, which is quite original. And there's a GREAT track that starts playing with 1 sword/shield upgrade. However, another sword/shield upgrade is right areound the corner, so the music quickly changes... to a track that's not so good. And that track stays with you a LOOOOOOOOOOONG time. Like, 70% of the game. Ugh....

Worth playing? Honestly - nah. GAW is way better. Golvellius, I mean, it can be fine if you really like those LoZ kind of games (I don't), or you're nostalgic (I'm not, never owned SMS until adulthood). But you're better off playing other games otherwise. Don't get me wrong, this is not the worst game around, there's plenty of worse games for the SMS, it's just that it's not that fun to play due to frustrating design choices.

May be an unpopular opinion but I'm not big on NES LoZ. I guess the whole "exploration" thing that was huge in 1987 isn't really anything amazing anymore, and the core gameplay is pretty average.

Golden Axe Warrior, however, does seem to be better and more fun for a number of reasons:

1. Doesn't require as much grinding (I honestly only did a bit of grinding to get the Knight's shield, mostly through the card minigame, never bothered to grind afterwards). In LoZ, you are in constant need of Rupees to buy bombs and items, and there's no card game like in GAW to speed things up. Grinding may be fun to some people, but I find it a waste of time in a game as simple as LoZ.
2. Is faster. GAW moves faster than Link (esp. with boots of speed) and doesn't have as much of a delay between attacks.
3. Is more straightforward. Now LoZ wasn't too hard to figure out if you had the manual which pretty much gave you the location of first several dungeons. But there were some parts that could end up a bit confusing - like playing a flute to dry up a pond. Also GAW gives you plenty of ingame clues, to a point where you really don't need more help.
4. Cuts you some slack in dungeons. Enemies don't respawn the instant you leave the screen, it takes some time for them to come back, which simply allows you to progress through dungeons faster. You also can't run out of bombs in the middle of a dungeon since you don't need any.
5. Allows you to look for secrets much faster. IDK what possessed Nintendo when creating the basic Candle. Not only it's slow in animation (the flame takes like 3 second for the flame to reveal a hidden passage), but it's also one use per screen until you get the upgraded one. That is such a ridiculous time waste compare to GAW's speedy tree chopping and the ice bell that reveals (most) breakable stones that I don't know what to say.

I also enjoyed the music from GAW a lot more, and it's of course a LOT better graphically.

There are things LoZ does better (like being able to select a second weapon, and having a second quest), but I'd give the edge to GAW for overall gameplay. It just feels a lot less clunky and obsolete, which translates to more fun.

Played through GAW as intended - CRT TV, real hardware, and I drew my own map of course. Which was pretty fun. No walkthroughs used. Found all items except Fire Magic scroll lol.

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I'd give this game a 6/10 score since it's fun but not groundbreaking. LoZ is (probably gonna get hated for this, lol) 5/10 to me. Sorry, LoZ fans. It's like saying "I prefer Little Samson to SMB3" on NES forums. Which I do.