Sega's Immortal Console (Ft. The Boss Level's M. Campassi)

Hands-on with the Sega Master System plus why it failed in the USA and Japan but went nuclear in Europe, Australasia and Brazil

Those who have even a passing interest in retro gaming will have heard of the NES: the Nintendo Entertainment System. It released in the United States in 1985 and was a massive cultural and commercial phenomenon both there and at home in Japan, rejuvenating the games industry in the West and bringing us greats such as the Super Mario Bros. Metroid and The Legend of Zelda… but across the Atlantic and south of the Caribbean, things were different.

In 1986, Sega released the Sega Master System, their 8-bit machine was slightly more powerful, boasted a wider colour palette and outsold Nintendo’s console in basically every region outside of Japan and the USA, it was particularly beloved in the Commonwealth and you guessed it: Brazil.

In this post, I’ve partnered up with The Boss Level: Brazil’s very own Marcio Campassi to tell you a little about the unfair business practices that led to the Master System’s trouncing in the USA, some of the games and strategies that made the console so popular in Europe and Marcio was even kind enough to write a whole section for the article about his memories with the Master System in Brazil and its enduring popularity there.

I hope you enjoy!

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What Went So Wrong in the US?

The Sega Master System didn’t really fail in the the traditional sense, like the Sega Saturn or the Dreamcast (it hurts me to type that last part) rather, it was sabotaged by borderline-illegal business practices.

The NES launched almost a year earlier meaning that until 1986, if you wanted to release games as a third-party publisher, you were stuck working with the geriatric Atari… or, you could get licensed by Nintendo and release your games for the NES which carried with it the obligation to not develop games for any other console. Worse, this also extended to retailers that wanted to stock Nintendo products, a practice that is now completely illegal. Essentially, within that first year on the market? Nintendo of America had engineered a monopoly on third party publishers and retailers.

Anecdotally too, whenever I read about this era of gaming (and I’m sure some of my more seasoned readers can corroborate) it was apparently impossible to find US game shops who sold both Master System games and hardware, they all chose Nintendo, the incentives were too good. As well as that, the company who handled US marketing and distribution for the Master System: Tonka did a poor job of it.

Scarcity increases price and the monopoly meant less than half of the Master System’s games ever launched in the USA; according to Wikipedia, of the 315 officially licensed Master System games 158 of them were never officially released outside of PAL countries and only 4 were US exclusives.

Nintendo’s head start both in the States and in Japan meant the Master System launched into an environment where it would be starved of third party support and outgunned at every turn by Nintendo’s voracious marketing and deep pockets, sure, it had its own great exclusives and its accessories like the Light Phaser and 3D glasses are much more highly-regarded than things like the bloody Power Glove and Nintedo’s less-reliable Zapper but when you couldn’t find them on shelves and they were often more expensive? I can’t imagine that made a difference.

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What Went So Right in Europe and the Commonwealth?

Europe’s gaming scene was a very different place than in the US and Japan, more than I tend to realise until I do more research.

For a start, there was no gaming crash in Europe. Home computers like the Commodore 64 and Alan Sugar of the UK Apprentice’s Amstrad computers were incredibly popular along with cheap games on cassette; gaming was alive and well here by the time the NES released, so scummy market tactics were never going to cut it. To top it off, Nintendo’s prices were higher than everyone else’s. In 2025 with a clearly defined niche in the market and millions of loyal fans you can get away with this but not in the mid-1980’s when 8-bit PC gaming was cheap.

Another factor was that Nintendo didn’t have the head start in Europe that it enjoyed in the USA and Japan. Nintendo took forever rolling out the NES despite it technically releasing a year before the Master System, so Sega were able to react appropriately with lower prices and wider availability.

Something that isn’t celebrated often enough is just how consumer friendly Sega were in their console days and how easy they made it to access their video games. I mention this because the Master System was later given a revision: the Model II and rebranded as a budget Mega Drive with its own great versions of 16-bit games and a rock-bottom price tag; the Model I Master System also had a second card slot so developers could cheaply release smaller-sized games. Of course, they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts but on some level, I imagine it felt like Sega had your back if you weren’t very wealthy and it’s another means by which the Master System entered so many homes; to this day in the UK, you can grab a Model II with Alex Kidd built-in from CEX or Ebay for less than £50.

When it comes down to it? The Master System was more cheap, more widely available and less hamstrung. In the USA, it had its hands tied behind its back whereas in Europe, Australia and New Zealand the Master System was able to swing back and achieve similar levels of success.

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But Was It Any Good?

I’m so glad you asked.

Before we get on to Brazil, let’s take a break from markets, sales tactics and numbers and have a look at the Master System’s library. This will be just a quick taste of some of the Master System games I’ve played and the kind of titles you can look forward to if you choose to buy or emulate Sega’s 8-bit machine.

Sonic 8-Bit

First of all, one indisputable advantage the Master System library had over the NES one is that they came in these fantastic VHS-style boxes instead of those useless cardboard ones, most of those haven’t survived to the modern day so boxed NES games tend to go for rip-off prices; I don’t know about anyone else who buys and plays retro but there’s a hard limit to what I will pay for an 8-Bit game, I can see myself paying the sometimes £100+ needed for a Saturn or Dreamcast game but with titles this old and short? I just can’t justify it.

With that out of the way… Sonic!

I collected every chaos emerald, got to the final boss, then lost my last continue playing this the other night.

Most non-Sega fans and even some Sonic fans don’t realise that Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 also had versions released on the Sega Master System with an entirely different set of levels and music: it’s not Sonic on the Master System, more like a Sonic for Master System and it’s a really great game with better physics, a higher difficulty and a less frustrating method for collecting the Chaos Emeralds.

There are a lot of these Mega Drive titles with versions on Master System and a lot of them are very good.

Footage courtesy of World of Longplays

Hang-On

I don’t have a box to share with this one because of the Master System’s coolest feature: built-in games. Every Master System has 1 or more games built-in to the system that plays whenever you boot the console with no cartridge, I lucked out and got the classic arcade racer Hang-On and light gun demo Safari Hunt in mine but since I don’t have the Light Phaser, I’ll just talk about Hang-On.

This is a shockingly good 8-Bit port of the 16-Bit arcade game with colourful graphics, great controls and zero slowdown. I’m a massive fan of Sega’s arcade racers and have lost hours of my life to the Saturn version of Out Run so I expect the same fate here.

Footage courtesy of hirudov2d

R-Type

Later R-Type titles would eventually come to Nintendo and most consoles in existence have a port of this game now but the original release was exclusive to arcades, home computers and of course: the Sega Master System.

It does suffer from some slow-down and sprite flickering but the arcade game is here pretty much intact with graphics that almost look like a Mega Drive game at times. A foundational shmup and in my opinion, better than the original Gradius on NES, I just love the cosmic-horror elements in this one.

Footage courtesy of World of Longplays

Shinobi

As with any Sega console, the Master System is loaded with arcade ports and this is considered one of the best. Shinobi is a straight port of the arcade version with almost no missing content and an added health bar but naturally, being 8-Bit, it doesn’t have the same graphical capability or technological horsepower.

Either way though, you’re playing Shinobi and that’s an experience you can’t really frown about, it’s all here and it’s all awesome.

Footage courtesy of World of Longplays

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse

Those who are into retro gaming will know that the Disney license was usually a seal of quality: Aladdin on the SNES and Mega Drive especially are usually put in the top 10 on both systems and fanboys on both sides debate the better version to this day. Specifically on the Sega side, the Mickey games (apart from Fantasia) are beloved too with most of the discourse I see online naming the Master System versions as superior. From what I’ve played of Castle of Illusion so far? It looks wonderful, controls well and plays a little bit like Super Mario Bros. 2.

Footage courtesy of World of Longplays

There are many more prominent games and franchises on the Master System: Golden Axe Warriors is a Zelda clone that was arguably better than the real thing, Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a firm favourite of the community and there is even a port of Prince of Persia more faithful than the SNES version but this was just a taste of the library: exclusively the games I’ve played so far, just to convey that this console is anything but a crappy version of the NES.

There is a good reason this thing was so popular in certain regions, because it’s awesome!

Before we move on let’s have a look at the controllers.

It’s got a big hole in the middle! Until 2005 Nintendo had the traditional cross D-pad design patented so Sega made a legally distinct version for their controllers. That hole in the centre allows you to screw in a mini-arcade stick but I’ve never heard of anyone preferring it this way.

A later version of the pad was released and was more brazen, removing the attachable stick function entirely. The buttons feel excellent and the pad doesn’t give you video thumb, so besides the lack of pause button, I prefer this pad to the one on NES.

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Sega Para Sempre

A modern Master System spotted in a mall by Marcio

In Europe, the USA and Japan, we talk about the Sega Master System as a bygone era: a legacy console that was loved and then passed into history but in Brazil, the Master System endures on shop shelves to this very day.

Brazil’s economy is famously protectionist. This is an economic practice in which the government levies high tariffs on imports so that home-grown industries can develop without being suffocated by fierce international competition; imagine opening a lemonade stand and making every shop on your street charge double your prices to sell canned soft drinks. The downside to this approach is that importing foreign goods can be horrendously expensive, which is the case in Brazil for game consoles. This has caused Brazil to be impenetrable for Nintendo and for a whole grey-market of clone consoles and bootlegs to arise… but Sega had an ingenuous way around this.

Brazilian company Tec Toy was given the license to produce Sega’s consoles on Brazilian soil and avoid these massive import fees making Sega accessible to all; even today, years after the big blue’s folding in the hardware business Tec Toy retains this license and produces Master System variants: usually a box loaded with ROMs now.

M. Campassi of The Boss Level (who you should definitely subscribe to) was instrumental in helping me research this article and I asked him to share some of his memories of the era and Tec Toy’s impact in Brazil. He encouraged me to edit or cut down what he sent but it was too heartfelt and wonderful to read, so I’m going to share the whole thing here:

‘I was around three or four years old when I first heard about the Master System. Thanks to Tec Toy’s relentless marketing, Sega’s console became a household name in Brazil. I still remember the TV commercials playing between cartoons, and those were good enough to compel my mom, a gamer from the Atari 2600 and arcade days, to convince my dad to get me one around 1991. That little console became my very first, and it sparked a lifelong love for games, all thanks to Tec Toy and their accessible pricing.

Over the years, I was lucky to own three different Master System models. My first was the Master System 3, which looked just like the European Master System 2. (Yes, we already had two other versions in Brazil. Very Final Fantasy of us, naming-wise.) Mine came with Sonic the Hedgehog built into the BIOS. Not that we knew what a BIOS was back then. We just said the game was “in the system’s memory.”

Later, I got the Master System Super Compact, a model that transmitted video and audio via antenna signals, a kind of proto-wireless setup that felt revolutionary at the time. Once again, Sonic the Hedgehog was preloaded, which was great... but I always had one major frustration: I never owned Alex Kidd in Miracle World on a cartridge. Most of my school friends had it, and I could only play it when I borrowed or rented it from a local store. Even today, that missing cartridge still feels like unfinished business. Eventually, we bought a second-hand Master System 2 with Alex Kidd built in, but that elusive physical copy continues to haunt me.

It may sound silly now, but back in the day, many kids didn’t want a Mega Drive precisely because it didn’t have Alex Kidd. Sure, the Mega Drive had Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, but everyone I knew preferred Miracle World, even if the latter was technically simpler. In early ‘90s Brazil, Alex Kidd and Sonic were royalty.

That reminds me of one of the most fascinating aspects of Sega’s Brazilian ecosystem. After Tec Toy introduced the Master System, they later brought us the Mega Drive, but most families stuck with the older 8-bit console because it was cheaper. Brazil was going through economic turmoil, and upgrading to a new console wasn’t always an option. Fortunately, Tec Toy kept the Master System alive and thriving with a robust catalog of games, blending American and European titles and even adding some uniquely Brazilian twists.

The biggest jaw-dropper I remember was Mônica no Castelo do Dragão (Monica in the Dragon’s Castle). Monica is our equivalent of Mickey Mouse, and her creator, Mauricio de Sousa, is basically our Walt Disney. So imagine how mind-blowing it was for kids like me to see Monica starring in her own video game. Of course, today we know it was a rom hack of Wonder Boy in Monster Land, but back then? It felt like something "truly ours".

And Tec Toy didn’t stop at sprite swaps. They took the time to fully translate Phantasy Star into Portuguese, which for many of us became our first RPG simply because we could finally understand what the characters were saying. English was a huge barrier at the time (and let’s be honest, it still is for many). In an era with such limited technology, Tec Toy’s localization work was nothing short of heroic.

Looking back, I admit that most of us didn’t really appreciate the full extent of what Tec Toy accomplished. We were the only country to receive Master System versions of Sonic Blast and Virtua Fighter Animation — Game Gear exclusives elsewhere, but reworked and adapted by Tec Toy just for us —, plus an impressively functional Street Fighter II port. These titles even got some coverage in local magazines, but we barely noticed. I know it sounds blasphemous for retro games who love the system, but you need to put in our mindsets at the time. Why play Virtua Fighter on an 8-bit console when the Sega Saturn was already out?

Also, not helping their case, Tec Toy flooded the market with Master Systems. Even today, you can walk into a store and buy a bright blue model with two controllers (six-button ones, which is strange since the original console had only 2 — go figure) and a few hundred games “in the memory.” That ubiquity may have cheapened the console’s perceived value among my generation.

But with time and perspective, it’s impossible not to admire what Tec Toy pulled off. They helped build a unified gaming culture in Brazil. Before them, we had a Wild West of Atari 2600 and NES clones. Tec Toy brought a new level of quality, from box art to game design, and paved the way for other companies to take Brazil seriously. If it weren’t for them, I probably wouldn’t have owned a SNES. Nintendo only came here officially because Playtronic, a joint venture inspired by Tec Toy’s success, saw that Brazil had real market potential.

And all of that happened because of a humble little 8-bit console.’

Mônica no Castelo do Dragão for Sega Master System

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The End

With the Master System added to my collection: the final console missing from my Nintendo and Sega home console library, I consider this the end of the road for my retro console acquisitions, sure, I could sell a kidney and get a Neo Geo or import a PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 (it never launched in Europe) but I’m happy with what I’ve got; maybe a PSP and Vita someday.

Once again I’d like to thank M. Campassi for helping me with this project, I couldn’t have done it without your help!

Of all the Substack posts I’ve written, I think this might be the one I’m most proud of so far, so I’d really appreciate your likes, comments and restacks. Retro gaming is incredibly US-centric so topics like the very European-focused Sega Master System and Brazil’s rich Sega history don’t get told often and especially not by the people who live where they were most prevalent.

Lastly, I want to announce that I’m strongly considering making this a Sega-centric retro publication.

I love Nintendo but in the retro sphere it feels like it’s all anyone ever talks about and I don’t see any other Sega-focused publications on here besides some covering the Dreamcast so I think that’s a gap that needs filing. Furthermore, in chasing the heady numbers I achieved reviewing more modern games, I’ve realised I’ve split my audience; when I do modern content, I get a lot of new subscribers and readers who don’t return to read what I’m really passionate about: retro, and the trouble with writing about Switch 2 is that literally everyone else is too, so my high-detail, long-form reviewing style is usually beaten out by snappier, wittier writers who don’t sit debating colon use and if they can speak their article and have it still sound good.

There has been a strong correlation lately between my retro stuff and higher engagement from my subscribers and if there’s anything I can learn from the gaming industry as a writer, it’s that I need to appeal to my actual audience, not the lowest common denominator.

I will still cover some modern stuff occasionally like the long-promised Hearts of Iron 4 review (it’s still coming I swear but when you put 2000 hours into a complex strategy game you have a lot to say) and Metal Gear Solid Delta but I want to pivot back to my retro roots now and fill this uncaptured niche while catering to my original audience, in fact, I purposely removed all subscribers with incredibly low engagement.

This planned pivot is something that will depend a lot on your feedback.