u/Max_Doe11

Max rides the Flying Carpet towards Aegis Island.

Valley of Peace: Panoramic View.

Minigame (Casinò Racing) & Action (Lava Fields) Sequences.

The Wonder Book.

Spells & Gears selection screens.

Characters Sprites.

This is something I've been wondering about lately, and I thought this might be the right place to ask since the SG-1000 is the Master System precursor which is retrocompatible with it and even use Sega Cards.

When I was a kid, I actually owned an MSX. I didn't have any Sega hardware myself, although I played the Sega consoles at friends' houses. So I never really paid much attention to the SG-1000 back then.

Recently, while going through the SG-1000 library on my MSXVR, I noticed something that immediately caught my attention: there are quite a few games that also existed on MSX. One that really made me curious was Magical Kid Wiz. I couldn't actually get it running in the virtualizer, unfortunately, but I started wondering how close the two machines really were.

As far as I understand, the SG-1000 and the original MSX are actually very similar from a hardware point of view: both use a Z80 CPU and the TMS9918-family video chip. The SG-1000 uses the SN76489 for sound, while MSX1 machines generally used the AY-3-8910, and there are also differences in the memory map and I/O.

So my question is: how close were these machines in practical terms?

Was porting a game between MSX and SG-1000 relatively easy because of the shared Z80/TMS9918 architecture, or were the differences significant enough that games generally had to be substantially rewritten?

And Magical Kid Wiz seems to be an especially interesting case, since apparently the SG-1000 version was actually based on the MSX version. Were there other examples where an MSX game was directly ported to SG-1000 (or vice versa)?

There's another thing I'm curious about. I vaguely remembered that Microsoft had something to do with the creation of the MSX standard. After looking into it again, I understand that MSX was developed by ASCII in cooperation with Microsoft, with Microsoft providing MSX-BASIC. But I also had this vague memory of Sega somehow being involved with MSX... Am I completely mixing things up here?

When I was a kid, I somehow got it into my head that Wonder Boy was SEGA’s mascot.

In my childhood imagination, it made perfect sense. The original Wonder Boy was this little caveman-looking guy running around throwing axes, and to me he was basically SEGA’s answer to Super Mario. Whenever I saw the two games in arcades, they seemed like very similar platformers made by two rival companies: Nintendo had Mario, SEGA had Wonder Boy.

Then, when I started going to friends’ houses in elementary school to play on the Master System, I discovered another character: Alex Kidd.

In my country, one of the Master System bundles actually came with Alex Kidd built into the console, so suddenly this character was everywhere. And I remember being told Alex Kidd was actually SEGA’s mascot.

And honestly, that also made perfect sense to me. Alex Kidd absolutely looked like a character who deserved to be SEGA’s counterpart to Mario.

So for years I had this vague childhood memory of Wonder Boy and Alex Kidd fighting for the imaginary title of “SEGA mascot” in my head.

Then, much later, I started looking into SEGA history online and discovered something that completely confused me again: apparently, Opa-Opa is sometimes described as SEGA’s first mascot, thanks to Fantasy Zone.

I have to admit, I never even played Fantasy Zone as a kid (or as an adult - I'm not evens sure about the game title), so Opa-Opa was never remotely part of my childhood perception of SEGA. To me, that little flying spaceship/creature simply wasn't the face of SEGA at all.

So now I'm curious about what people here think: who was actually SEGA's first mascot before Sonic? Was it really Opa-Opa? Was Alex Kidd the more legitimate “mascot” during the Master System era? Was Wonder Boy ever genuinely treated as SEGA's mascot, or was that mostly something that existed in the minds of kids like me?

And, perhaps more interestingly, who did YOU think was SEGA's mascot when you were a kid?

Maybe it was Alex Kidd. Maybe Wonder Boy. Maybe Opa-Opa. Or perhaps you were convinced it was Psycho Fox!?

Valley of Peace - The house of Max & Granny.

When visiting my achievement in my profile page I can see that "Mod Awakening" is still "grey" but in mu eligible communities (mu sub-reddit) I've complete 7 out of 4 tasks (!) and the progress orange bar advenced over its maximum borders. If I visit the details page of this achievements, I miss only the "schedule text posts for 2 weeks" which is still greu even if I did it, maybe more than needed. Can someone on reddit fix this bug for me in order to progress with my achivemenets?

The Coastal Town of Baraboro. Town's Well.

Sir Snail Library.

I've been thinking about Sonic Blast (known as G Sonic in Japan) lately, and I still can't figure out why SEGA felt this game absolutely had to exist.

I understand what they were aiming for. Donkey Kong Country had made pre-rendered 3D-style graphics incredibly popular, and Sonic Blast clearly tries to achieve a similar look. The problem is... this is the Master System/Game Gear we're talking about. The hardware simply wasn't built for that kind of visual style, and the result is a game that, in my opinion, sacrifices gameplay and readability just to chase a graphical trend.

Was the goal to give Master System owners their own "twin" release of Sonic & Knuckles for the Mega Drive/Genesis? If so, that raises another question. Sonic & Knuckles wasn't really a completely standalone sequel in the traditional sense because it was designed as the second half of Sonic 3 through the lock-on technology. So why not create something that played to the Master System's strengths instead of trying to imitate a visual style it couldn't comfortably handle?

I've finished Sonic Blast myself, but honestly, only because I'm a huge Sonic fan and wanted to experience every part of the series and its lore. As a completionist, I don't regret playing it... but years later I'm still asking the same question: what was the real purpose of this game?

Was it simply a marketing decision to keep the Sonic brand active on the 8-bit systems, or do you think there was a more compelling reason behind Sonic Blast's existence?

Xenobia, the Hills Village.

Village of Cacti.

Max & Pepe meet Shabo.