At one point, the SEGA/Nintendo battle was the hottest game debate ever. Today, we see that history is truly written by the victor. Retro game systems at mall kiosks sport 100s of games from the NES, but rarely bare any ackowledgement of the old original Sega machine, known in the states as the Sega Master System. We had one, and had a modest collection of solid games for it.



We had more than this I'm sure (Phantasy Star wasn't to be found in this box), but there are some good memories here.



Not of this one though. I BARELY remember even having this game! I think a video is in order . . .



OK I remember now. This was one of the games that my dad really got into, but I hardly even touched. I remember really digging the music and not really enjoying the overhead parts of the game when I played.



And here's Zillion! It was the first game I remember playing where I had multiple characters to switch out to. There was at least one of the three characters though, that you had to rescue to unlock! Weapon of Choice on XNA seems to do a similar thing. The box completely doesn't do the game justice. About a minute of this video gives you an idea of how this game played out.



Looking at this, something just didn't seem right to me. I knew there was more to this game and I was kinda right. Then I noticed the title on this video in the sidebar. There was a Zillion II, which was AMAZING by comparison!



This was the first game that I love/hated. The first level was just slightly too hard for young me, especially since this was the first bike level that I can remember, even before Battletoads. But the music and the fact that the bike TRANSFORMED had me coming back often to try and really get into this one.



Now in the last post I mentioned card based gaming. Well, here it is! Transbot. The game on the Master System that I REALLY enjoyed as a kid. Aside from the game itself, I thought having a game on a thin little card was like space age technology.



The cards fit into a secondary slot on the Master System. Compared to the TurboGraphics cards, these were a little bit bigger in surface.



Again, box art won't tell the story well enough. Here's a typical play through on Transbot.



That's pretty much it. You beat a boss in the underground, and get to play through the above ground again. I thought this game was amazing, if a little repetitive.



Alex Kid and Wonderboy. What really caught my attention here was the naming. A "Two-Mega" cartridge? Since when was a "Mega" a unit of measurement?



Also found in this box was one of these handy system cleaning kits. They looked like they helped, but they really weren't essential, so far as I could tell. I could rant here about Disk Read Errors and Red Rings, but we all know that systems were made of sterner stuff back then. :)

On the next episode of the Vault: Ever seen a retail NES cart that didn't have the Nintendo Seal of Quality?

Links to previous Vaults!

Tubatic's Vault: Retro Magazines and Pics
Tubatic's Vault: Zelda's Gold Cartridges and a Rare Magazine
Tubatic's Vault: Random NES Cartridges