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Sega Master System Architecture: A Practical Analysis
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoSomething I didn't see mentioned: The Mega Drive/Genesis models 1 and 2 are backwards compatible with the Master System (but not the SG-1000) through a cartridge slot adapter called the Power Base Converter. If you have a Mega EverDrive, it can be used to play Master System ROMs.
- wingi 6y agoCheck the https://www.copetti.org/projects/consoles/mega-drive-genesis/ https://www.copetti.org/projects/consoles/mega-drive-genesis...
- kawsper 6y agoI feel like the SMS has the best sound from that era, but it might just be my nostalgia :) "Escape in a Forest" from Ninja Gaiden on the SMS is my all time favorite: https://youtu.be/E3IWkLFfD6M https://youtu.be/E3IWkLFfD6M but the whole OST is a masterpiece that does not get the credit it deserves.
- bane 6y agoThe music in the Double Dragon port is also quite fantastic. https://youtu.be/U5OZBgayEJE https://youtu.be/U5OZBgayEJE The FM module version is even better: https://youtu.be/fWlnsW3ywsI https://youtu.be/fWlnsW3ywsI I always get the sense that whoever did it was having a blast.
- jnwatson 6y agoThat really brings me back. That was a heck of a game.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoInteresting, I thought the SNES was much better due to its use of sampled sounds which sounded more naturally. It holds up amazingly well still today. I always thought the MegaDrive sounded plasticky and tacky, but it might very well be just because I grew up with a SNES.
- dleslie 6y agoSNES is the next generation, with the Genesis/MegaDrive. SMS is NES era. I prefer MegaDrive due to its distinctive sound; sampled audio lacks character. However, like with the GameBoy, it really matters what model you have. Rev 1 Genesis and grey brick gameboys have excellent sound.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y agoOh right, I misread. The SMS sound hardware was indeed quite good for its time! > I prefer MegaDrive due to its distinctive sound; sampled audio lacks character. Interesting, to me the MD sounds like any random 90s FM sound card or MIDI synth, while the SNES is instantly recognisable.
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- bane 6y agoSomething kind of interesting, the architecture for the Sega 8-bit consoles (and the Sega 8-bit computer, the SC-3000) are extremely close to that of the Colecovision and the MSX 8-bit computers (which are in turn different, but very close to each other). Hobbyists regularly port games between the systems. There was definitely something in the air for Z80-based systems at the time. The Sega Game Gear is also almost identical to the Master System and can also play Master System games with an adapter. Curiously, the Sinclair ZX systems also used a Z80 as the CPU and there are also a great many ports of ZX Spectrum games to the MSX computers, but those are a bit more complicated. If you've never played SG-1000 games, they're worth it. The system had about the same power as the Colecovision, but the games are Japanese style games of the era vs Western games the Coleco mostly received. The ports are so stripped down that they're functionally demakes and it's often rewarding to see games just a bit too complex for the system stripped down to their core gameplay and graphics essentials. My favorite is the port of Elevator Action, which barely holds together, but somehow has all of the game there. https://youtu.be/kUFgy6aVgbw https://youtu.be/kUFgy6aVgbw
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoI think the Z80 was overall, due to its instruction set, the 8-bit CPU of choice unless the system builder needed to be cheap; and this makes sense given it was pretty much engineered to be a cheaper CPU than the Motorola 6501. So it made sense that Commodore used a 6502 variant and I'm betting Nintendo chose a 6502 core for its NES to keep costs down. But all your old Japanese 8-bit arcade games of the 80s were Z80-based.
- philistine 6y agoThe Famicom used a 6502 clone from Ricoh in part because that’s the only thing they could find; every other chip manufacturer had too much backlog. They had already used the Ricoh chip in arcade boards, and just went with that one.
- fullstop 6y agoMy trusty graphing calculator, a TI-85, also was Z80-based.
- tosh 6y ago@ variants: there is also the Game Gear, a handheld by SEGA with similar specs to the Master System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Gear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Gear > With a late start into the handheld gaming market, Sega rushed to get the Game Gear into stores quickly, having lagged behind Nintendo in sales without a handheld on the market. As one method of doing so, Sega based the hardware of the Game Gear on the Master System, albeit with a much larger color palette than its predecessor: the Game Gear supported 4096 colors, compared to the 64 colors supported by the Master System. Part of the intention of this move was to make Master System games easy to port to the Game Gear.
- onion2k 6y agoI had a Gamegear when I was at school. It was a great console but it ate batteries at an insane pace.
- christoph 6y agoYou could also get a really simple adapter to plug Master System cartridges straight into the Game Gear https://segaretro.org/Master_Gear_Converter https://segaretro.org/Master_Gear_Converter
- ibdf 6y agoMy first video game. That design was way ahead of its time.
- rm445 6y agoI don't get the impression that it was - it came out later than the NES and was a bit more powerful, but much less so than the 16-bit systems. There are some (relatively) impressive games for the Master System, but I think that's because it stuck around into the nineties, in regions where there was an installed base i.e. not the USA. Late-generation games often benefit from better optimisation, and things like more cartridge space. The Master System port of Mortal Kombat, for instance, despite being pretty horrible as a game, is miraculous from a technical point of view. Despite being heavily cut-down, of course, it was an attempt to create the same game. That's a port (or demake or whatever else you'd want to call it) of a 1992 arcade cabinet, onto a home console released in 1985.
- ibdf 6y agoThe Master System and the Mega Drive (Sega Genesis) were huge in South America where I grew up. They were also a lot cheaper than SNES and more widely available.
- snarfy 6y agoIf you turned the system on without a game in and you held up, 1 and 2 all simultaneously, there was a secret game built in to the system. When my friend got his SMS he did that on accident the first time he turned it on, leading to much confusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_Maze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snail_Maze
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- JNRowe 6y agoWelp, there goes an hour in the rabbit hole¹. ¹ https://www.smspower.org/Development/BIOSes https://www.smspower.org/Development/BIOSes
- kawsper 6y agoMy SEGA (sold in the EU) shipped with Sonic installed, it booted Sonic if no cartridge were detected, interesting that it started as a hidden game.
- grecy 6y agoThe Master System II sold in Australia had Alex The Kidd as a built in game...
- phjesusthatguy3 6y agoParent and grandparent and GGP are all correct. The snail game is built into all(?) of the system revisions and accessed as such, later systems had other "pack-in" games burnt into ROM. I bought my SMS 22 years ago, so I'm not 100% sure but I think mine came with a cartridge of Hang-On/Safari Hunt, rather than being built into the machine.
- falsaberN1 6y agoCan confirm. Here in EU I have seen both the Alex Kidd model and the Sonic 1 model (the later succeeded the former as Sonic became way more popular than Alex Kidd ever was. Makes sense to me). I have never seen one packed with Hang-On myself, but I recall seeing it was a thing in a magazine (although, over time, this magazine turned to be pretty unreliable, but I'm pretty sure a Master System bundle with a Sega arcade port and a gun game were a thing in this region)
- stonedge 6y agoI saved my paper route money and was trying to decide between an NES and an SMS. I think I chose the SMS because it was different. Everyone had an NES. But as time went on, I wished I had an NES. Way more games and cultural relevance.
- lostgame 6y agoSega Genesis / Mega Drive was the first console I learned to program for, maybe when I was about 11-12 or so and was getting a start at ASM when I found hex editing too limiting in the ROM hacking scene. The Genesis/MD uses a Z80 processor as its sound processor alone - so it is amazing to me to consider running everything off that on a Sega Master System! I'm a little obsessed with Sega Saturn homebrew at the moment, or I'd try some SMS homebrew - but the article was fascinating!
- Grazester 6y agoSega Saturn homebrew? I though that was an oxymoron. I love my Saturn like there is no tomorrow but it seemed like to me the homebrew sense was dead due to the whole system architecture. The only thing I hear about is the Z engine which is insane in its capabilities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYEiDwZbRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPYEiDwZbRc
- lostgame 6y agohttps://jo-engine.org https://jo-engine.org Is a fantastic open-source homebrew platform for the Saturn that the Z-treme engine is based off of. I recall watching all the phases of the Z-treme's engine's development on the jo-engine forums as XL2 was creating it. So cool to watch. :)
- mark_mcs 6y agoIt's a shame the scene is so quiet as the Saturn is a fascinating machine. If you use something like Jo Engine then it's not too difficult to get up and running. If you want to roll your own and still have something that performs it gets messy. Stuff like dealing with bus contention between the SH2s, the VDP access timing/slot system, that funky little DSP. You can see why it took so long to get decent libraries for it. It's still fun to see how far you can push the hardware.
- sehugg 6y agoThe VDP's Mode 4 was the secret sauce; it made the SMS graphics almost on-par with the NES. You still have 8x8 tiles, but with a single 16-color palette instead of four different 3-color palettes. For scrolling, the NES has 2-4 screen buffers, but the SMS just lets you hide one single row and column of tiles offscreen. This isn't as bad as it sounds since -- on SMS you can write to VRAM at any time during the frame, as opposed to NES where you can only write during vertical blank. I've ported a simple NES game written in C to the SMS (https://8bitworkshop.com/projects/?n=sms-sms-libcv/chase https://8bitworkshop.com/projects/?n=sms-sms-libcv/chase) and I think it'd be feasible to write a translation layer between the two platforms. Sound might be a little tricky, since NES's APU is more advanced.
- bennysonething 6y agoCan someone explain, does s Japanese master have better sound? From clips it sounds 100 times better.
- christkv 6y agoThey had an additional fm synth chip that was not present in the us and European models from what I remember.
- Parseus 6y agoJapanese Sega Master System (and older Sega Mark III when used together with the FM Sound Unit) had an additional Yamaha YM2413 sound chip.
- bennysonething 6y agoThanks, the megadrive actually has the master system hardware in it. I've got an everdrive and I can play master system ROMs on it. It's actually a Japanese megadrive that I own, I want to dig it out and see if the sound is better!
- JohnBooty 6y agoIf you're interested in seeing what the Sega Master System can do when it's pushed to its absolute limits: Blast! demo (2017), pulling off some crazy rotation and perspective effects https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I742MvGhkME&feature=emb_logo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I742MvGhkME&feature=emb_logo "Games That Push the Limits of the Sega Master System" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Ze11Z8ffU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Ze11Z8ffU Road Rash - This is unbelievable. Visually, it's nearly up to the standards of the Genesis version. Although of course the Genesis version didn't run at a particularly high frame rate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlfLgnE6OIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlfLgnE6OIw
- pacomerh 6y agospeaking of SEGA, Twisted Electronics just released an FM synth that uses a pair of FM audio chips (YM2612) similar to the one discussed in the Sega Master, this one is from the 'Mega Drive'. https://twisted-electrons.com/product/megafm/ https://twisted-electrons.com/product/megafm/
- wyldfire 6y agoSMS came with Sonic the Hedgehog? Interesting! I thought it was introduced with the Genesis.
- krallja 6y agoIt was! The 8-bit SMS/Game Gear version was introduced in 1991.
- sjwright 6y agoThough it was not a port, rather a completely different game developed by a completely different team. It was a good game in its own right, but it’s not comparable to the 16 bit original.
- falsaberN1 6y agoAnd music (and production, I believe?) by Yuzo Koshiro. A legend.
- vvillena 6y agoSome people (like me) prefer the 8 bit Sonic games. Sonic 2 for Master System was a completely original game, and it is a 2D platforming gem.
- sjwright 6y agoI agree, and in fact Sonic 2 for SMS was my first foray into Sonic as a child. A great game. A brilliant game. But way too different to make useful comparisons to the 16 bit games.
- wyldfire 6y agoOh..so was it a port? Hadn't the genesis been introduced by then?
- krallja 6y ago
- fernly 6y agoSorry, I find the article impossible to read owing to the spidery font rendered in 50% gray. Who thinks that is a good idea?
- syspec 6y agoAlways in awe of articles like these, where does a person with this kind of knowledge work?