Friday’s news that Sega Master System games will be added to the Wii Virtual Console means that many gamers who missed out on this great system back in the day will be able to enjoy games they might have otherwise never heard of. The NES dominated the home console market in the 80s, leaving the Master System in the dust despite the latter being the technically superior of the two.

The system came to North America in 1986. But by that time, the NES had been kicking ass and taking names. Nintendo had already asserted its dominance with great third party support and offered many TV and movie show licensed titles that the Master System didn’t. It didn’t matter that for the few instances where a game would appear on both systems (eg: Ghostbusters), the Master System version would be far superior. In retrospect, it’s interesting that these days licensed games are often sub-par and never considered system sellers. How the times have changed.

Although North American sales for the Master System stopped in the early 90s, the system enjoyed great support in Brazil up until 2000. In fact it even had its own, albeit scaled-down, port of Street Fighter II.

Now that the Master System will be featured on the Virtual Console, perhaps it may finally get the recognition it deserves as a great system. Sure, it never had the many hundreds of games the NES had, but how many of those NES games are actually playable today? I think if a proper study were to be done on the ratio of good to bad games for each system, we’d find they’d be just about even (although I’d like to think Sega would win that one). Here are just a few of the great SMS games we’ll be looking forward to, though not necessarily enjoying, and why.

Fantasy Zone & Fantasy Zone II

As far as the 8-bit generation goes, Fantasy Zone is one hell of a messed up gaming experience. Its setting is a world of, well, fantasy. The game’s obnoxious color scheme involves way too many hot pink enemies and neon green surroundings. In fact, it’s downright hideous yet strangely alluring. Maybe it’s the fact that your enemies are almost cute. Maybe it’s the psychadelic and repetitive soundtrack. As a tiny orb-like ship with wings, you can choose to fly either left or right or stay still (though that’s not recommended). Defeated enemies explode into showers of coins. These coins can then be redeemed in a shop (which appears mid-level) to upgrade your ship with better lasers, missiles, and even speed enhancements.

Zillion & Zillion II: The Tri Formation

As a child, I really didn’t understand what was going on in the first Zillion game. It played a little bit like Metroid, but featured interchangeable heroes – The White Knights – as the protagonists of the game. Like in Metroid, your ship is parked on the surface of a planet and much of the on-foot exploration goes on beneath the surface. Unlike Metroid, however, is that each screen in Zillion was a room that was basically a puzzle that needed to be solved by destroying terminals and noting the special character each one would give you. Then you’d have to input those characters into another computer terminal to open a door to the next area. The fact that the characters were all gibberish made it hard to play without a notepad nearby. Some of the characters actually resemble other objects and I distinctly remember using the nonsensical phrase “Y, bum, apple, foot” to recall the order in which to open one of the doors. That was 20 years ago, so it obviously worked.

Another fun thing about Zillion is that it was based on a then-popular anime series by the creators of Robotech and Speed Racer. Even cooler? Sega’s lightgun peripheral, the Light Phaser, is an exact replica of the guns used in the series.

Zillion II: The Tri Formation was a radical departure in gameplay from the original. The main attraction this time around was that half of the stages were auto-scrolling and had you riding a bike called the Tri Formation while shooting down enemies and hopping from platform to platform. Scattered throughout these stages were power-ups that upgraded your laser as well as the rare power-up that allowed your bike to transform into a flying exo-suit of armor. Even-numbered stages have you running around on foot in corridors too narrow for the bike to operate (during these stages, the bike transforms to its third formation – a backpack).

Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars

Ah, Alex Kidd. He was supposed to be Sega’s answer to Mario before Sonic the Hedgehog came around. Many people have forgotten him but his games offered a wider variety of gameplay than Mario’s, with flying stages and bike stages, to name a few. And what does he have to show for it now? Nothing.

Alex Kidd was pretty cool. He had these huge ears and, come to think of it, looked a little like a character from the Monkey Ball games. The Lost Stars had him bouncing around different brightly-colored worlds and beating up on bad guys, like any good platformer. Unlike Mario, however, Alex Kidd had a set of brass ones and preferred to punch his enemies’ lights out. That screenshot above? Yeah, it’s a naked dude who throws skulls at you from between his legs.

Shinobi

Having a console port of this arcade monster on the Master System was a very ambitious attempt. The game suffers from terrible moments of sprite flicker (though not nearly as often as R-Type, another ambitious port) but despite this plays rather well. Shinobi introduced players to Jo Musashi, a master ninja tasked with rescuing the children of the world’s leaders from a terrorist organization known as the Ring of Five. The kids were tied up and guarded by boomerang-throwing, shield-wielding enemies in various parts of the stages. To rescue one of the kids, you simply walk into them. They then miraculously fly to the top corner of the screen and some sort of bonus is awarded: weapons upgrades, life upgrades, or bonus points.

Shinobi had five areas to conquer, with a big boss to face off against in the last level of each area. These bosses were the leaders of the Ring of Five, yet one of them is unexplainably a helicopter while another is an animated Buddha-meets-Shiva statue. Ah well. The game has some unapologetically difficult stages and one death means you lose ALL your power-ups, which are stackable. So dying once means you’d better start over. What’s even more frustrating is that should you actually play through every level and finally beat the last boss (who is a total ass to beat), all you get is the same thing you get when you fail the game: a black screen with the white text “Game Over” in the middle.

Thanks, Shinobi. I hate you.

Wonder Boy in Monster World

Nintendo had Adventure Island and Sega had Wonder Boy. The exact same game! But Sega had a cool sequel: Wonder Boy in Monster World. Monster World allowed players to explore areas like homes and shops, and even buy upgrades in a pseudo-RPG style. This game is essentially already on the Virtual Console – Twice – with the Sega Genesis version as well as the TG16 one. But there’s also three Street Figher II games on there, so odds are we’ll be seeing this one up for download.

Phantasy Star

For a great example of why the SMS was a great system, one needn’t look further than Phantasy Star. This mammoth (at the time) RPG had players exploring catacomb-like dungeons, towers, and caves from a surprisingly smooth first-person perspective while allowing players to explore the overworlds of the game’s three planets via a 3/4 overhead view. In what is now standard turn-based RPG fare, players build up strength, experiences, and money by battling monsters. Money is then used to get various upgrades to weapons and armor, but can also be used to buy vehicles to make planet exploration easier. The story was remarkable and immersive for its time and though the battles can get repetitive, there’s a great deal to explore and do. There’s a reason this game spawned a franchise that’s still around and successful today: it’s amazing.

Safari Hunt

Everyone’s talking about how much they’d like to see Duck Hunt come to the VC. Well I for one would rather play Safari Hunt. It offers a wider variety of game than just ducks. You can shoot rabbits, bears, spiders, bats, pumas, and even fish. Each stage has a time limit and a certain amount of bullets and players must reach a designated point total to go on to the next area. It’s basically three repeating stages that increase in speed for each cycle. The best part is that there’s no annoying dog that laughs at you if you suck.

Master of Darkness (AKA Vampire)

Remember Castlevania? Of course you do. But chances are you don’t remember Master of Darkness. It was very similar to Castlevania in many respects but – you guessed it – looked a lot better. As a psychologist trying to kill Dracula, you had to first go through many trap-and-enemy-filled stages. Also like Castevania, there was a variety of different weapons you could use to get the job done. Your main weapons were knifes and axes, but your (limited) secondary weapons included bombs and guns.