SMS is the UK

[elmagicochrisg]

I was a Nintendo fanboy back then. Always saw the SMS as the poor man's NES. Only knew one person that had a SMS too. One controller missed a button, and the complete controller's buttons fell out from time to time. SEGA was meh, and I wanted nothing to do with them...

Also, I was always under the impression that Flemish / Dutch people were more Nintendo oriented, and Walloons / French people were more SEGA minded...

Only SEGA slogan I remember from back then is a French one too...

SEGA, c'est plus fort que toi !

[d123456]

Edit:
Some unconfirmed console sales from swedish forum SegaLovers,

Master System ~100 000
NES ~450 000
Mega Drive ~200 000
SNES ~400 000

That´s alot of mega drives. I knew of only one (spoiled) kid that had the Mega Drive, and he got the release day japanese version. I can´t believe more nes than snes were sold. I´d estimate twice as many snesses, well in the Netherlands at least.
It´s all about marketing. Still is to this day except now you can buy everything everywhere. Back in the days a store either had SMS or NES, not both except of course if it was a game-store.

[alienjesus]

The Master System was the first game console I owned. I had never even seen a NES in person until I bought one from eBay in about 2008/9.

I'm probably a bit young to confirm this, having been born near the end of the 80s, but it seems to me home computers were more popular in the earlier years of the 80s, then towards the late 80s and early 90s when it shifted more to consoles, the Master System (and Mega Drive) became the system of choice. It's worth pointing out that I knew a few kids who had a Commodore 64 or Amiga aswell as a Sega console.

[Reprise]

Oh yeah, I remember some people owning Amiga's and Commodore 64's. I even remember wanting an Amiga at one point, despite not having a clue what one was.

I still can't believe how huge the Mega Drive was compared to the SNES, at least from my experiences. I only knew 1 person who had a SNES growing up, but literally everyone had a Mega Drive. As I got older, I did discover more people who had (or once had) a SNES, but the Mega Drive was definitely the dominant console of that generation.

Also being born in the late 80's, I am too young to really remember much of the 8 bit generation, but it was the same for me as alienjesus. I hadn't even seen a NES until I was a bit older, but there were a fair few people I knew who had a Master System.

[ZeroAX]

1) Europe is just not the UK

2) Sega was bigger than Nintendo during the 16-bit era, but not the 8-bit era. It's just that Nintendo didn't have a (in reality) monopoly on the market like in Japan and the US. But it was probably 70-30 in Ninty's favor.

[noiseredux]

1) Europe is just not the UK

was this aimed at the thread title? If so... yeah I know. I was going for an "Anarchy In The UK" thing. Also... I just noticed that I typed "is" instead of "in" which probably completely botched that hahahahaha.

[theclaw]

Certainly an interesting contrast with the US. I've noticed this only by the number of games that were EU only for the system. It's tough because the cases look the same as the US (not talking the Brazil ones with the blue). Fortunately there are some good databases online with images and what not to help decipher.

Unless you're going for a complete US set or trying to get all variants of some of the games though it doesn't matter. You can play any SMS game in any system. Obviously some of them are going to have speed issues if they weren't optimized, but if you're just collecting games you want to play it doesn't matter. As I've said before with the example of Power Strike, the only difference is the US copy has a cover that's all dark blue where as the Euro one is in color and has multiple languages on the back. The cart is exactly the same.

Anyway, waiting for someone from Europe to actually speak up as it's all been us US bastards not shutting up so far.

I'm still looking into that. I've yet to find sufficient proof a single 44-pin cartridge (SG-1000, Mark III, JP SMS, etc) to date has been successfully booted with the western SMS using any form of physical converter.

Power Strike? Yeah curiously the western version supports region detection. It'll become Aleste if JP system mode is found.
An effect that still happens on Genesis since its regions were inherited from SMS.

[ZeroAX]

1) Europe is just not the UK

was this aimed at the thread title? If so... yeah I know. I was going for an "Anarchy In The UK" thing. Also... I just noticed that I typed "is" instead of "in" which probably completely botched that hahahahaha.

haha. yeah mate you killed your own joke xD.

Well Europe was always a problematic region. It's always been more about computers and handhelds in the mainland. Consoles didn't become big till the Playstation. Sony has kept control of the continent since then but its biggest market the UK, having more American tastes is xbox country.

So as you see, whether the Master System was a "success" or not, is very difficult to judge. Compared to the NES? Compared to the NES-SMS difference in other countries? Compared to gaming computers at the time?

The only thing I can say for sure is that it DID have a presence in the continent. It was like comparing the PS2 and oXbox in the states. The first was dominant but you know the second one existed too.

[noiseredux]

haha. yeah mate you killed your own joke xD.

Haha, I'm really good at that.

Well Europe was always a problematic region. It's always been more about computers and handhelds in the mainland. Consoles didn't become big till the Playstation. Sony has kept control of the continent since then but its biggest market the UK, having more American tastes is xbox country.

Which handhelds were really popular in Europe? HOW popular?

So as you see, whether the Master System was a "success" or not, is very difficult to judge. Compared to the NES? Compared to the NES-SMS difference in other countries? Compared to gaming computers at the time?

That's interesting and definitely puts things into a different perspective for me than how I took it when reading Service Games. This is really the kind of first-hand input I was looking for. Thanks!

[Fuzzy_Cthulhu]

I got a Master System as a present instead of the Mega Drive, which is what I really wanted.

I hated it.

I might have more nostalgia for it now, but at the time it just lacked in every department.