Forums

Sega Master System / Mark III / Game Gear
SG-1000 / SC-3000 / SF-7000 / OMV
Home - Forums - Games - Scans - Maps - Cheats - Credits
Music - Videos - Development - Hacks - Translations - Homebrew

View topic - SMS fun facts

Reply to topic
Author Message
  • Joined: 21 Apr 2019
  • Posts: 80
Reply with quote
SMS fun facts
Post Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 3:09 pm
Post whatever fun facts about the SMS you know. I'll start off.
The SMS is internally labelled as the Mark 4 (Mark IV).
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 06 Jan 2005
  • Posts: 177
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 4:26 pm
During development Alex Kidd In Miracle World was known simply as "Miracle Land"
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 21 Apr 2019
  • Posts: 80
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 4:09 am
Yes, I know this is more of an SG-1000 fun fact.
In N-Sub, due to a typo (presumably) in the in-game HUD, instead of it saying (C) Sega 1983, it says (C) Sega 1988.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 08 Jul 2001
  • Posts: 8644
  • Location: Paris, France
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 8:38 am
boye wrote
In N-Sub, due to a typo (presumably) in the in-game HUD, instead of it saying (C) Sega 1983, it says (C) Sega 1988.


I have dumped almost 15 cartridges of N-Sub from different sources and countries and they all had the 1983 text so far.

The 1988 variation for N-Sub and Safari Race are of unknown/forgotten sources and I am tempted to reclassify them as unknown hacks. They have no timestamp (same as the Image/Helsinki dumps provided to us in 1999, which included a handful of legit samples/prototypes, however they are not smspower releases so unless Image released them before I would say they come from another source. TL;DR; they are slightly suspect tbh. But I cannot explain why would anyone change that date - marking old software are more recent in a GG xx-in-1 compilation maybe?). If anyone has traces of where those dumps came from I would appreciate. I think they emerged on the internet in 1998-1999.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 21 Apr 2019
  • Posts: 80
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 4:15 pm
The Light Phaser's trigger is mapped to the 1 button, so in games that don't use the Light Phaser, it mimics the 1 button.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 22 Mar 2015
  • Posts: 228
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 4:30 pm
TheAssassin wrote
During development Alex Kidd In Miracle World was known simply as "Miracle Land"


The game was going to be a Dragon Ball game in the beginning

https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/games/alex-kidd-dragon-ball/55632/alex-kidd-was-almost-a-dragon-ball-game

Now we have kidded, is there someone ever have in mind to make a Dragon Ball game someday?
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 21 Apr 2019
  • Posts: 80
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 3:09 pm
128k Sega Cards were planned for the SMS, despite the Sega AI Computer already having 128k My Cards.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
  • Posts: 14682
  • Location: London
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 7:54 pm
Sega were also planning on releasing 16KB and 8KB games - all BIOSes have code in to support this, even though no such thing exists.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 14 Oct 2008
  • Posts: 508
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 5:44 am
Shocking, even 32KB was probably getting to be a crippling low limit by 1985.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
  • Posts: 14682
  • Location: London
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Fri May 17, 2019 5:46 am
And it's hard to imagine how you'd get graphics data to fill 16KB of video memory in 8KB of ROM.
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 07 Aug 2007
  • Posts: 220
  • Location: Yach, Germany
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:37 am
Maxim wrote
And it's hard to imagine how you'd get graphics data to fill 16KB of video memory in 8KB of ROM.


On the ColecoVision, 8 KB was a common game size. It still has 16 KB of video memory.

Modern ColecoVision games, including mine, have compressed graphics data in ROM that gets uncompressed into VRAM at some point (typically while loading the game or a level).
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 01 Apr 2005
  • Posts: 250
  • Location: Almere, The Netherlands
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:40 am
The SMS joypad can be used on the Amiga for those games that utilize two buttons.
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=57540
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 14 Aug 2000
  • Posts: 740
  • Location: Adelaide, Australia
Reply with quote
SMS fun facts
Post Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2019 4:03 pm
The ALU in the Z80 CPU is only 4 bits wide. You can see it in photos of the Z80 silicon die.

So you could say arithmetic in the Z80 is so nice, it does it twice.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 24 Sep 2018
  • Posts: 66
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Thu Jul 25, 2019 2:21 am
The data bus that the VDP uses to obtain graphics data is 16 bits wide. Therefore the Master System is almost exactly as "16-bit" as the PC Engine.

(This piece of trivia brought to you as a comment on the silliness of marketing labels, if nothing else.)
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 24 Sep 2007
  • Posts: 64
  • Location: Umeå
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 1:17 pm
In Action Fighter, on the third level, if you enter the SEGA truck right before reaching the boss you will be able to control the truck!
However you can't shoot, so you can't kill the tanks.
It happened to my brother in the 90's, only once, and I've never been able to replicate it, maybe you have to die in a certain spot to spawn the truck at the right distance.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Joined: 20 Dec 2004
  • Posts: 739
  • Location: Lyon, France
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Tue Aug 13, 2019 4:12 pm
If you play wonder boy in monster land on a sega megadrive using the sega master system converter with a megadrive controller, the main character won't move as the game will consider you're constantly pressing left + right simultanously, he will be doing left/right movements like 20 times a second
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 05 Jan 2006
  • Posts: 373
  • Location: USA
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:01 am
The Sega Game Gear (basically a portable SMS) CPU and VDP has jumper settings for full PAL support even though no system used this AFAIK. It can be changed for better SMS PAL game support though. The internal LCD even adjusts the timing and resolution for PAL!
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
  • Joined: 22 Dec 2012
  • Posts: 50
  • Location: Australia
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 8:45 am
The first lost/unknown Sega title (in the home consumer division) is the mysterious G-1013, which was never released for the SG-1000. It would have been catalogued between Sinbad Mystery (G-1012) and Golgo 13 (G-1014).

One dubiously possible explanation is that since Sega wasn't wholly Japanese owned at the inception of the SG-1000, there may have been some influence from the American/Western culture in the company to skip cataloguing a game with "unlucky 13."

One game we do know that was unreleased on the SG-1000 was "Champion Ski," but this was likely to be catalogued with a different number, as it was advertised quite late in the SG-1000's lifetime, and there are other missing numbers in the series.
  View user's profile Send private message
  • Site Admin
  • Joined: 08 Jul 2001
  • Posts: 8644
  • Location: Paris, France
Reply with quote
Post Posted: Wed Aug 14, 2019 3:12 pm
Here's some informations about Champion Ski:
http://www.smspower.org/Games/ChampionSki-SG

Which was suggested by someone to be C-62 (see http://www.smspower.org/forums/11044 ) but I don't remember the rationale behind that number.

Also of note
http://www.smspower.org/Games/ChallengeSoccer-SG
http://www.smspower.org/Games/GreatEscape2-SG
  View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website
Reply to topic



Back to the top of this page

Back to SMS Power!