27 May, 2008 | No comments

Sega Master Systems

Sega Master System (SMS) first came on the market about 20 years ago and successfully competed with other video game machines for the first 12 years. Its major competitor was Nintendo Entertainment System. The device was first released in Japan and featured a pack-in game cartridge and a light external gun. Even at a price of $200, it sold a fair number of devices.

Check out our selection of Sega Master System games.

The unusual feature about the SMS is that is has two different types of media ports-one which allows for reading programming from both a cartridge and a card. The best thing about the card system is that it is small and cheap. The first games released on the card based system were Spy v Spy and Trans bot.

In 1987, Sega also introduced the 3D glasses for some SMS games. The lenses have a high speed LCD shutter which rapidly closes over opposite eyes in synchronization, thus producing an illusion of a 3D image on the screen - a real novelty at that time. Most users of the 3D glasses loved it and more games (Missile Defense 3D, Zaxxon, and more) were released to be played in this format.

Sega also had a light gun on the periphery which reflected a futurist laser gun. This lead to several gun games being released - the best of which was Rescue Mission. Other games which can utilize the gun include Activision and Montezuma’s Revenge.

In 1990, Sega announced the released of a newer SMS device known as SMS 11 - which was smaller and more attractive than the original version, but intense competition from other brands and lack of software support have led to not-so-wide sales.

Today there are numerous games available to be played on the SMS.