The Competition Emerges

While Sega was enjoying considerable success in Japan with both its SG-1000 and SC-3000 product lines, one of its arcade competitors took note and began making plans of its own. Originally founded in 1889 during the Meiji period of Japan by artisan Fusajiro Yamauchi as a general purpose amusement company, Nintendo had been but one of many such companies in the field until the advent of the videogame boom. They quickly seized the opportunity with their first arcade videogame, Computer Othello, and then went on to create such arcade classics as Donkey Kong and Mario Brothers. It was also around this time that Nintendo got its baptism of fire in the home console market, producing a series of exceptionally high-quality arcade ports for the ill-fated ColecoVision system. They vanished along with the console and a good many other products from other vendors into the black hole of the "great crash," in the American videogame market in 1982, but even such a calamity did not daunt them. Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi, descended from the company's original founder, proposed a bold plan to Nintendo's engineers to develop their own personal computer for the Japanese market. Both design and production were rushed by Yamauchi, who feared that Nintendo would miss out on a golden opportunity, and the end result was a rather basic no-frills box called the Famicom (short for "family computer") released in Japan in 1983 almost six months to the day after Sega's SG-1000 Mark III was released. It was a relative failure at first, due to design flaws introduced during its rushed production. While it failed as a personal computer, it enjoyed some success as a home videogame system due to its near-perfect ports of popular Nintendo arcade titles, and this caused Yamauchi and his engineers to rethink their strategy. At the same time, the near-total collapse of Atari in the American videogame market had left the door of opportunity wide open in America for a new generation of videogame consoles - provided there was a company stubborn enough and with enough marketing chutzpah to overcome the ranks of the gun-shy American developers and retailers. Nintendo took that plunge in 1984 ... and the rest, as they say, is history.

Officially released in the United States in early 1985, the Nintendo Entertainment System (aka NES) was an instant overnight success. The quality-starved American videogame market, long oppressed by the overall blandness of Atari's offerings and still savoring the all-too-brief taste of such systems as the Mattel Intellivision and the ColecoVision, flocked to Nintendo's banner in droves. Nintendo gained a monopoly on the quality-starved American market virtually overnight, which meant that any future competitors would have a tough row to hoe in the world's most profitable market place.

It is at this point that we turn our attention back to Sega. You see, they did not take too kindly to the sudden success of their newfound rival ....

The Next Sega System

The Sega SG-1000 Mark III, better known as the Sega Mark III, was the third and final iteration of Sega's original SG-1000 product line. It was also the first dedicated videogame console by Sega to be based on 8-bit technology. It was modeled on the failed SC-3000 and first released in October of 1985 (¥15000) as Sega's initial response to Nintendo's Famicom. The following year, it found its way to Hong Kong, and a rare few even managed popped up as exports in Western markets. It had been three years since Sega had rolled out a new videogame system, and its market presence was not what it had been thanks to Nintendo's arrival; however, Sega held hope that its name still held sway with the gaming public.

The Sega Mark III was almost visually identical to the Mark II model save for the raised cartridge port and the additional small card slot in front of that. Optional accessories included the Mark II's SK-1000 keyboard and a smaller version of its printer, as well as a Koala-style drawing pad for users with an artistic bent. Like its ill-fated predecessor, the SC-3000, the Sega Mark III was modeled in part after the Japanese MSX personal computer standard, featuring a "blazingly fast" 3.6 MHz Zilog Z80 as its central CPU. Several improvements were also made to the stock SG-1000 graphics capabilities - upping the maximum number of on-screen sprites from 32 to 64 and so on. Perhaps most important of all, the Sega Mark III was the first to integrate a PCM sound synthesizer chip, thus providing users with 6-channel audio and finally getting away from the "bleeps and bloops" of the SG-1000 series. In addition, an FM synthesis module based on the versatile Yamaha YM-2413 FM generator chip was also available for even better-sounding programming efforts. This added nine more audio channels to the system's six as well as fifteen pre-programmed synthesized instruments for an audio experience rivalling that of more powerful personal computer systems. Regarding the additional card slot, the development teams at Sega had finally taken the opportunity to take the SG-1000's Card Catcher accessory and integrate it directly into the system. This made it fully compatible with both cartridge and Game Card formats. It was also fully back-compatible with all SG-1000 software in both cartridge and Game Card formats.

The Sega Mark III represented a bit of a departure from the 8-bit consoles of the day in at least two different ways. It was the first purpose-designed, dual-format home videogame console. Not only did it work with standard Sega 8-bit videogame cartridges practically identical to (and interchangeable with) those first used in the SG-1000/SC-3000 product line, it also had that "card catcher" slot for 4-bit Game Cards. Game Card games tended to be smaller and not as sophisticated as cartridge-based games due to physical constraints, but that also meant that they would tend to be considerably cheaper than their larger cousins. Users could select either port to load games, which gave them a bit more gaming flexibility than Sega's single-port competitors - for example, they could leave their favorite game plugged into one port and swap games in the other, switching back and forth between ports as desired. It was also the first home console to experiment with virtual reality in the form of 3D glasses. These were little more than an electronic variation of the red/green or red/blue 3D spectacles used by thrill-seeking moviegoers back in the 1950s. Each lens would rapidly strobe between opaque and clear, and this was carefully timed to correspond with identical rapid shifting of on-screen graphics imagery to simulate a 3D environment. While admittedly crude by today's standards, they worked quite well and proved popular enough to warrant a series of SMS games designed especially for their use. This was the top-of-the-line model as far as the SG-1000 product line went, but it would not be the last iteration of the hardware.

A Hard Row To Hoe

Sega was never really able to hold its own against upstart Nintendo in the home console market. After the debut of Nintendo's Famicom, Sega's sales had begun downward spiral in the wake of their chief competitor's new-found popularity. There was no question that the Mark III was a superior gaming console in every aspect; however, the relative cheapness of the Famicom coupled with its wide range of titles and Nintendo's ruthless "inventory management" marketing techniques gave it a virtual lock on the 8-bit software market. Most of the "good" titles of the day were produced exclusively for Famicom and its American cousin, the NES, which left other console vendors such as Sega out in the cold. Not to be outdone, Sega decided that what was good for the goose was also good for the gander and went about releasing its own dedicated videogame console. Borrowing a page from Nintendo's book, they based their new console on the most powerful computer hardware they were vending at the time and then put that system through a major overhaul. In redesigning the Sega Mark III, Sega stripped it of all functions and ports save those useful to a pure gaming system. This meant that almost all of the Sega Mark III's optional accessories were jettisoned, with the end result being a stripped-down 8-bit console not all that much different from its 4-bit SG-1000 Mark I predecessor save in horsepower. The integrated Card Catcher port was retained from its ancestor, however, as was the standard Sega cartridge port, controller ports, and A/V ports. The FM synthesis audio module was retained and integrated into the system for the Japanese version, but stripped out for the export version in order to cut costs. Also, for the first time for a Sega system, a light gun was to be included with every one of these new consoles. It was modeled after Sega's earlier "Zillion Gun" for the Zillion anime TV series and reflected both Sega's gun gallery gaming heritage and the popularity of Nintendo's Duck Hunt for the NES.

Remember our rundown of the specs for the Sega SC-3000 personal computer? Here are the specs for the Sega Master System, aka the Sega Mark III. I told you these were going to look awfully familiar.

The newly redubed Sega Master System was a direct challenge to Nintendo's monopoly on the videogame market. In a first for the company, Sega made the bold move of exporting their new system worldwide before releasing it at home in order to better compete with their rival. It was not the first time that any company had dared to challenge Nintendo on its own turf, but this time the challenger was one who theoretically packed the talent and product to counter or best anything that they could offer. This marked the beginning of the second round in the console wars, one in which Japanese companies would supplant American ones in vying for dominance, and would last almost a full decade before the next major player would burst upon the scene.

The SMS became Sega's first vended home console in the U.S. when it made its debut in June of 1986, about a year and a half after the Sega Mark III was first released in Japan. It did better than expected during its launch, selling some 125,000 units during its first four months on the market at US$200 a pop, and found its way back home to Japan in November of 1987. This was no doubt helped when it was featured on the television talk show Siskel and Ebert, during which the two famous movie critics (Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert) openly endorsed the console. Even so, Nintendo sold over 2 million NES units during the same period - a 16-to-1 market ratio that did not please Sega CEO Hayao Nakayama. He decided no to waste too much effort on a market where he was so clearly outgunned, so in early 1988 arrangements were made with Tonka, the American toy manufacturing powerhouse, to market the system and its software to as many U.S. outlets as possible. Lacking the cash for an extended overseas effort, Sega also let Tonka control the marketing and advertising for the SMS. Sega's decision to turn the fate of the SMS in the U.S. over to Tonka proved to be a fatal error from which the system never really recovered.

If the market performance of the SMS had not been exactly stellar in Sega's hands, then apathetic might be a better way of describing it under Tonka's guidance over the next three years. Tonka had practically no clue as to how to properly market and gather additional support for a videogame console, which meant that the SMS went nowhere fast. It made practically no headway against Nintendo's venerable NES due to lack of exposure and Nintendo's absolute lock on both the developer community and U.S. videogame market. This meant that there was almost no room for the competition, and Nintendo's exclusive development licenses meant that Tonka could only manage to garner two third-party companies to support the SMS in the U.S. (Activision and Parker Brothers). By the end of 1988 Nintendo had sold over 30 million NES consoles, with retailer demands for over three times that number. Given all of its technical superiority, the SMS failed to put a dent in the U.S. market due largely to Nintendo's monopoly and Tonka's incompetence.

One SMS title deserves special mention at this point, though, because it was one of the exceptions to the otherwise abysmal market performance of the SMS. Originally developed in 1987 as a showpiece for the fading Sega Mark III, Yuji Naka's Phantasy Star was also one of the last titles ever made by Sega for its 8-bit console. It went on to became one of the most popular games Sega ever released and quickly attracted a worldwide following. A science-fiction RPG with decidedly fantasy elements as well, it told the story of a young woman named Alis and her quest for justice against an age-old evil threatening her world. It was the first console RPG to be released in the United States (1988), since Nintendo had not seen fit to import either Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy for the NES at that time. It was superior to both of them in terms of graphics and sound, delivering fully detailed on-screen displays and character graphics (as opposed to the tile-like graphics of Nintendo's offerings) and making full use of the Mark III's PCM synthesis chip to deliver one of the best FM-based audio experiences ever heard in an "old-school" 8-bit RPG. It was the first RPG to use first-person perspective (during the dungeon-crawling sequences), as well as the first RPG to feature a woman as the game's lead character. Phantasy Star's popularity was such that Sega eventually would make a franchise out of it, thus prodding Nintendo to finally bring its own RPGs to the U.S. The original Phantasy Star was re-released twice - the first time in 1992 in all of its original 8-bit glory as a special custom cart for the 16-bit Sega MegaDrive, and the second time over a decade later in the Phantasy Star Collection Sega Ages for Saturn owners. Sadly, however, the first Phantasy Star would be the only one ever released for its original 8-bit systems, and its 1988 reissue for the SMS would be the only English-language version ever to see the light of day.

Tonka's abject failure at marketing the SMS caused Sega to rethink its marketing strategy regarding its 8-bit console. In 1990, not long after Sega's 16-bit Genesis began its destruction of Nintendo's market monopoly, Sega of America reacquired the SMS marketing rights from Tonka. It then retooled the system and released the redesigned console as the Sega Master System II. Harkening back to its SG-1000 roots and bearing a striking resemblance to the subsequent Genesis Model 2, the SMS 2 was for all practical purposes a cartridge box and nothing more. It had no Game Card slot, no power light or reset button, no expansion port, nor the fancy BIOS (with its built-in instructions and hidden mini-game) of its predecessor. This time around, Sega tried to do everything that Tonka had failed to do in terms of product support - better advertising, better acknowledgement of developers and licensees, better videogame packaging - but the effort was doomed to failure from the start. The days of 8-bit technology in the U.S. console market were by now obviously over, even though the NES was still stumbling along largely due to sheer momentum.

While the SMS itself may have died a rather unnoble death in America at the hands of Nintendo's wildly popular 8-bitter, its technology was even then being revived in another form - one that was smaller, portable, and again pitted it against an old and familiar foe. Now is not the time to discuss the successor to the SMS, though. Instead, let us see how Sega's 8-bitter faired in Sega's other major markets.

All Is Not Lost

If America was Nintendo's 8-bit console success story, then Europe was Sega's. The SMS became Sega's first console to be marketed on a widespread basis in the Old World when it hit the European videogame market in September of 1987. Once there, it quickly took it over - much to Nintendo's chagrin - and never let go until the 16-bit Sega MegaDrive came along in 1990. Over a dozen third-party developers signed on to produce games for the system, and they are largely responsible for some the best games ever released for the SMS during its lifetime. These includes names with which most gamers are quite familiar: Absolute, Activision, Acclaim, Codemasters, Core, Domark, Flying Edge, Image Works, Sony Imagesoft, TecMagik, Tengen (nee Atari), U.S. Gold, and Virgin. Even the much-vaunted NES was unable to topple the popularity of the SMS in Europe, which it had royally trounced in Asia and America, and Nintendo did not know how to handle this unexpected reversal of fortune on this new battlefield. It was even forced to stoop so low as to license popular SMS titles for release on the NES in order to buck up flagging sales. The SMS performed so ably in Europe that Sega officially recognized its third major videogame market when it formally opened its European corporate offices the following year. On the other hand, SMS market dominance meant that Nintendo would never open a European corporate office for NES support. It was a bitter pill that Nintendo found hard to swallow, and they would not forget it when it came time to make future licensing arrangements for new titles in the years to come. As for the SMS itself, it would remain an integral part of the European console scene despite its 8-bit technology until 1996, when it would be officially discontinued by Sega in order to make way for the Saturn.

It can be justly said that the SMS saw its final glory days not in Sega's usual worldwide markets, but in the economic powerhouse of South America's largest nation. The official last hurrah for the SMS would be down in Brazil, where the third and final official incarnation of the console was released in 1989 by Tec Toy. Dubbed the Sega Master System III, it was little more than a cosmetic makeover of the SMS 2 with certain localized features, such as built-in games. It was an instant hit with cash-strapped Brazilian gamers, and eventually some 2 million units would be sold over the next eight years (1989-1997). Tec Toy localized a number of SMS titles for Brazilian audiences, even going so far in some cases as to translate the games into Portuguese and replace the characters with ones more familiar to Brazilian audiences. They also converted several Game Gear games for use on SMS hardware (Sonic Blast), with some of these undergoing the Tec Toy localization process as well. Only a few brand-new SMS games were made under the Tec Toy license, with the best known of these being their 8-bit conversion of Capcom's Street Fighter 2.

One Last Hurrah

Beginning in the late 1980s and extending well into the 1990s, Sega developed a multi-tiered R&D strategy aimed at developing a broad range of next-generation consoles, ranging from small handheld units to high-end tabletop models. This is now known by Sega historians as the planet series of consoles for the simple reason that all (save one) of the systems in question were code-named after a planet in our solar system. The names of planets beyond Earth were used for tabletop systems, while the names of planets between Earth and the Sun were used for handheld systems. There are, of course, only two planets whose names could be used for handhelds, so likewise there are two such systems to go with them. While we shall reserve discussion of Project Venus until it is time to discuss the Genesis, this is the time to discuss the only remaining candidate - Project Mercury.

Sega began work on Project Mercury in 1989. Its avowed goal was to produce an 8-bit handheld console that would be superior to Nintendo's popular GameBoy in every way. Since SMS technology was available and obviously superior to GameBoy hardware, it was drafted into use for the new system. Utilizing SMS hardware also meant that practically every single title in Sega's 8-bit libraries could be re-released for the new system, thus cutting costs considerably and using the savings in developing new titles. Unlike Nintendo's system, Sega's new handheld would have a color LCD screen in order to showcase the superior titles that would be released for it. It would also be held lengthwise between one's hands, placing the controls at the thumbs and thus making it far easier to play than the admittedly cramped layout of the GameBoy. The final name chosen for the new system was Game Gear, and it was finally released to the Japanese public on 6 October 1990. Its American debut followed mere months later, and it found its way to Europe before the end of 1992.

There is really not that much to say about Game Gear, aside from the fact that it was never able to come anywhere close to the worldwide popularity of the GameBoy. The inclusion of the color LCD meant that the system had a notoriously short battery life. Also, like its venerable 8-bit ancestor from 1987, Sega never could come up with a library of top-notch titles to compete with to those offered by Nintendo for GameBoy. It was like the early days of the SMS all over again, save for Sega's new Sonic franchise. There were a slew of Sonic titles, as might be expected, and a handful of decent third-party efforts from the usual Sega licensees, but that was about it. The remainder consisted of SMS retreads or retoolings, and recycling old SMS games for Game Gear no more fooled consumers at that time than did recycled Genesis games for Sega CD. Game Gear did moderately well in Sega's traditional strongholds, the U.S. and European markets, but it hardly made a blip on the screen in Japan and Asia. Sega quietly killed the system in 1996 in order to better focus its resources against the new threat from Sony, and that was the end of it. Game Gear died a quiet death, its passing mourned by few save its fans, and with that the 8-bit chapter in Sega's videogame console history came to its official end.

Final Observations

So if the SMS was such a success outside of North America, why did it fail in the world's most profitable market? The following information is derived from Jeff Bogumil's Sega Master System FAQ, which is available in a variety of locations on the Internet. It sums up the situation as well as any other account that has been written on the subject.

• First come, first serve: Nintendo was the only videogame company foresighted enough to tread the American waters in the wake of the videogame market crash. They were willing to do whatever it took, including marketing the NES themselves, in order to seize it for their own. Their persistence paid off handsomely - by the end 1985, they owned the U.S. videogame market in a way that not even Atari had been able to accomplish. This left little room for competing systems, especially one that took three years longer to cross the big pond than did the NES.

• Nintendo's illegal monopoly: When you own 90% of the world's largest videogame market, then you don't have to play fair. That leaves only 10% for your competition, which in theory means they never should be able to catch up with you no matter what they put out. Nintendo's initial success with the NES was such that it was able to force its software developers into exclusive licensing arrangements - in other words, their products had to be exclusive to the NES and not ported to other vendor's systems. This resulted in a number of lawsuits brought by both the public and private sector, with the end result that in 1992 Nintendo was found to established an illegal monopoly on the U.S. videogame market in the New York state court system. Nintendo's first response was a slight relaxing of its licensing restrictions, in which a developer had to wait at least four years before porting an NES title to another system. This did not satisfy the American and Japanese governments, who eventually forced Nintendo into abandoning such tightly exclusive contracts. Unfortunately for Sega, the government intervention came too late to save the SMS, and it never acquired the library of games that it could have had thanks to Nintendo's ruthless "inventory management" tactics.

• Name-brand preference: It didn't matter one bit that Sega made some of the best arcade games in the world, many of which had been faithfully ported to the SMS. Every videogame system was a "Nintendo" in the minds of the typically brain-dead American consumer, long inured to a steady stream of high-pitched advertising. Thanks to Nintendo's successful advertising and promotional campaigns, the NES found itself part of the American culture of that day. Even today, most Americans who grew up during the 1980s still refer to any videogame console as a "Nintendo." Parents liked the NES because it had nice, family-friendly games. Kids liked it because it was cool ... and if you friends had one, then you had to have one, too. It was the new status symbol of American consumerism, in which every home had an NES for the kids while the parents spent their time on their IBM PCs or Apple Macintoshes, and that suited Nintendo just fine. In a market culture where having the "in thing" means everything, the SMS was definitely the "out thing" and quickly shunted aside.

• Poor software: Let's face it - the SMS never had and never could achieve a large library of good games due to Nintendo's near-absolute lock on the videogame development community at the time. The initial offerings in the U.S. have been described as "wretched" by some and "horrid" by others, and what few popular titles there were tended to be the usual sports or action stuff or the rare exceptions, such as Phantasy Star. Let's face it - the SMS software base simply didn't have the wide-ranging appeal and variety found in that of the NES.

• Poor product management: Perhaps the single worst decision Sega made concerning the SMS was turning its fate over to Tonka, a company that had lots of name recognition but absolutely no experience in the videogame market. In a move that would be worthy of Sega itself about a decade later, Tonka left most of the solid titles overseas and marketed (for the most part) cheesy arcade junk instead. There was little real gaming experience to be had in Tonka's offerings for the SMS, again save for some notable exceptions, whereas the NES library was replete with excellent choices for whatever kind of gaming experience you wanted.

• Poor third-party support: Nintendo's lock on the developer community meant that Sega and Tonka had to give its limited third-party support all the exposure it could. This never happened, due largely in part to Tonka's bungling. Both Activision and Parker Brothers, the only two U.S. third parties to be had for the SMS, received almost no credit or recognition for their efforts. On the other hand, Nintendo had studied former rival Atari and noted that it had made the same mistake years before with the Atari VCS, causing a number of programmers and developers to bolt the game-making effort. Nintendo made sure to give its third-party base plenty of exposure, even if they were locked into tightly restrictive contract, and that in turn generated additional support among other prospective third-parties wanting to develop for the NES.

It may surprise you, however, to learn that the Sega Master System is Sega's second-best selling videogame console to date. Taking into account the three iterations of the console, along with Sega's own figures and those of its licensees, it seems that over 13 million SMS units were sold worldwide between 1986 and 1998 - and that doesn't include the clones and knock-offs. While that comes nowhere close to worldwide sales of its chief competitor, Nintendo's Famicom/NES, it is remarkable when one considers its technology and then compares it to the performance of other Sega consoles. The 16-bit Genesis/MegaDrive still rules the Sega roost with 28.5 million consoles sold, and after that comes the 8-bit SMS with its 13 million. Next comes the 32-bit Saturn with just over 10 million units sold, then the Sega CD at 6.5 million, and finally the 128-bit Dreamcast at 5.5 million as of October 2000 - which is still on the market as of this date and should break the Saturn's sales record sometime in 2001 (provided current purchasing trends continue). It is a remarkable feat for a system that some videogame historians in the U.S. still consider to be a failure. Those who have been diligent enough to do their research, those who have examined the system and its software base, those who have actually worked the numbers, those who are able to take in the big picture without getting lost in the details - they will tell you otherwise.

Warts and all, the SMS was a key factor in developing Sega's user base outside of Japan, being as it was the company's first home system that it marketed to other countries. While it did not do as well as had been hoped, Sega's arcade games remained as popular as ever and brought in much-needed profits while the SMS foundered on the home front. The SMS alerted gamers around the world to the fact that Sega was perfectly willing to go the extra mile and "bring its arcade games home" on hardware that was every bit as good (if not better) than Nintendo's, and that did not go unnoticed. Sega's worldwide reputation improved as a result, and the SMS helped set the stage for the next Sega console that would follow. It would mark a new beginning for Sega, because for once it would be riding the cutting edge of home console technology instead of following in its wake. Sega's next system would be the one that would turn the home videogame market on its ear, but it could not have done so had not the SMS opened the doors to the world marketplace first. It took the dogged persistence of Sega's 8-bit console in the face of overwhelming odds to blaze the trail for the 16-bit powerhouse that would thunder along shortly afterward in its wake.

Sega Master System/Game Gear Factoids

• The internal Sega code name for the SMS was Power Base. You will find it printed on each and every PCB for the original SMS.

• Officially licensed variations of the Sega Mark III include:
  • The Sega Mark III (Japan, 1986)
  • The Sega Master System (all markets, 1987)
  • The Sega Master System II (U.S. and Europe, 1990)
  • The Sega Master System III (Brazil, c.1987)
  • The Sega Master System Compact (Brazil, c.1992)
  • The Sega Master System Girl (Brazil, c.1992).

• Known clones of the Sega Mark III/SMS include:
  • The Grandstand Programmable Computer (Europe and Australia, 1986)
  • The Mark III Game System (New Zealand, 1986)
  • The Mark Video Game System (Finland, 1986)
  • The Samsung Gam*Boy (unlicensed South Korean product, c.1987).

• The TV Draw graphic board for the Sega Mark III and SC-3000 was produced by Sega as a Japan market exclusive, where it was known by the name Terebi Oekaki (i.e. "TV Art"). It is essentially identical to a Koala pad and is the forerunner of the pen tablets that were later designed for use with the MegaDrive and Pico system. It was slated for release in most Western markets under a variety of names, but never saw the light of day except in prototype form.

• Only seven of Sega's Game Cards were ever released in the U.S. SMS market. Among them were Spy vs. Spy and Transbot.

• The rear 50-pin card edge connector on the SMS Model 1 was a holdover from the SC-3000. No official SMS peripherals were ever developed for it.

• The SMS was the first Sega product to use the word "mega" in its advertising. It was a descriptive term that Sega would subsequently recycle for its next major console.

• In bringing the SMS to market, Sega hurriedly converted the code of many Sega Mark III games while leaving the original Japanese graphics and text intact. These were Sega's first dual-language games, and a complete list of them (along with information on how to detect them) can be found in Jeff Bogumil's Sega Master System FAQ.

• While the product itself was never released, two prototype Game Card Converters for the SMS Model 2 are known to exist.

• While Game Gear can run SMS games through the use of such products as the Master Gear, there was no similar product released by Sega that lets an SMS run Game Gear games. It was discussed at the time and a couple of companies announced such a product, but it was never released. The chief problem was in finding a way to accurately convert games coded for Game Gear's 4,096 color palette into something useable by the limited 256-color palette of the SMS. By the way, according to the Sega hardware experts, the color palette issue is the only real technical difference between the SMS and Game Gear.

• The original version of the SMS has a built-in snail maze game hidden within its system hardware. To access it on a machine without a built-in game, turn on the console without a cartridge or Game Card inserted and wait for the instruction screen to appear. Now press and hold both buttons on controller one. To access it on a machine with a built-in game, turn on the machine while holding both buttons on controller one. It was removed for the later iterations of the console, the SMS 2 and SMS 3.

Sources

• Akiyuki, Yoshimi. The Sega Mark III Web Page, 2000.
• Batelle, John; with Johnstone, Bob. "The Next Level: Sega's Plans For World Domination." Wired (San Francisco: Condé Nast), issue 1.06, 1996.
• Bogumil, Jeff. The Sega Master System FAQ. The Software Zone, 1996.
• "Brazil and the NES." ltsr's NES Archive, 2000.
• de Chantal, Sylvain; and Boisseau, Oliver. The Video Game Consoles FAQ. Digital Press, 1999.
• ---------------; and Hamel, Eric. The Real Game Gear FAQ. Digital Press, 1999.
• Dyer, Clinton R. The Foreign SMS FAQ. Digital Press, 1999.
• Herman, Leonard; Horwitz, Len; and Kent, Steven. The History of Videogames. GameSpot, 2000.
• Kent, Steven. The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games. Bothell: BWD Press, 2000.
• Sega of America, Inc. "A Brief History of Sega," Sega, 1998.
• Sheff, David. Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped An American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children. New York: Random House, 1993.
• "Super Majik Spiral Crew's Guide to the Sega Master System." Patent Pending, 1997.
• Worne, Robert. "Sega Master System." Robert's Classic Videogame/Computer Museum, 2000.
• ZinG. "The History of Sega." EmuGaming, 1999.