As chronicled in a post from a few months ago, the new Sega building here in San Francisco houses a Games Archive of truly stupendous depth and, if you grew up with Sega games, raw emotional power—something like walking into a cathedral, only with more Sonic games. When Clumsyorchid asked me if I was interested in digging into these archives and doing a series of blog posts on classic Sega games, I believe my answer was something in the order of um, yes please, I think I can manage that, whilst trying to disguise a nearly unwholesome hunger that was no doubt gleaming in my eyes.

Since I couldn’t find any SG-1000 units in the archives (maybe there were some hidden under a secret floor panel?), I decided to start with the Sega Master System. My early gamer cred comes from having owned one of these back when all my friends owned Nintendos, and I still have very fond memories of this system. I also still have my original system:

Note the “pause” button that is right next to the “reset” button. Of all the many times back in the day that I lunged from my chair to slap the pause button, I can only recall accidentally hitting “reset” once. I think it was while I was playing After Burner, and I think it made me very angry. Details at this point are fuzzy. I did always love the design of the original Sega controller, though, which had an easy-to-use octo-directional pad. I think the Master System was actually a truly lovely piece of hardware; the games typically had terrific colors and crisp graphics, and music to rival the great stuff that Nintendo was doing at the time.

So, there were plenty of Master System games to choose from, and I may have been intoxicated by so many classic games in one location, but I did manage to pull out a few for this first post—two fairly classic choices, and a wildcard:

One thing that’s important to keep in mind about Sega, especially if you’re dipping into the archives, is the incredibly deep arcade heritage the company has. Sega’s history actually goes back to 1940 (not a misprint), when they were an American company called Standard Games, making coin-operated game machines for servicemen overseas (in 1952 the company, by then relocated to Japan, was renamed as “SErvice GAmes”—get it?). So it seemed worthwhile to pick a few titles with strong arcade flavor.

Golden Axe was an easy choice, and not just because of the recently released Beast Rider game. The original Golden Axe was a terrific arcade game and what’s striking is that, 20 years later, the graphics of the Master System port actually look quite excellent:

These are ad hoc digital camera shots of a widescreen television, meaning there’s some quality loss in these posted images, but the colors are pretty brilliant and the character models and environments were quite detailed. Erring on the side of great graphics means the Master System’s 8 bits were taxed to the limit, so the game definitely had some framerate issues. I found I got used to them, and the combat is still fun to hack-and-slash your way through. Also, what’s true in Beast Rider was true in the original—nothing says “I have mad skills” like the ability to beat up gnomes and take their potions:

Moving on: So, before there was Sonic, there was . . . Alex Kidd? Yes—a half-monkey / half-boy with giant ears and a powerful punch who was, in the 1980s, Sega’s unofficial mascot character (the official mascot, pre-Sonic, was a critter called Opa Opa from a game called Fantasy Zone). Alex Kidd starred in a series of action-adventure games starting, with Alex Kidd in Miracle World, in 1986.

Please note the above underwater image. Side-Scrolling Action Game Rule No. 2 states, “There is always an underwater stage”. Always. There is also usually a factory stage (with saw blades), a forest stage (with bats), and a cavern stage (with lava pits, and more bats). That’s just how worlds were made back then. Also of note: pausing Alex Kidd takes you to a menu where you can select any items you might have for use, so I had to take that above underwater shot from the hip, as it were. The fish there murdered me about a half second after this was taken, so I hope you all appreciate the sacrifices I’m making for you.

This is a fun game, and while it clearly has Mario in mind it also moves at a much brisker pace, meaning you can zoom through the colorful levels at a nice clip, while jumping around punching bad guys and collecting loot. It has all the elements of the golden age of side-scrolling games, with some great added features like shops with in-game items for sale (including motorcycles!) and, um, some mind-bending games of rock-paper-scissors:

The last game I looked at (for now) was a complete unknown to me. SpellCaster is actually a pretty terrific game though, maybe my favorite of the ones I looked at, and it reminds me a lot of Lord of the Sword—it’s a 2D side-scrolling action game with a medieval/fantasy setting and some really cool RPG elements sewn in. SpellCaster takes the unique (cough) gaming plot of having you take control of a young man who must seek out the evil forces who attacked his village:

The game is divided between side-scrolling levels where you blast demons and other bad guys with magic, and more RPG-ish stages in towns, where you can interact with things from a sort of first-person perspective, and hit up townsfolk for information and goodies. For example, a “spaghetti man” (presumably a Westernized translation of “noodle vendor”?) will tell you the next town you have to go to . . . but only after you talk to him and buy some of his delicious, delicious spaghetti.

There’s also the titular Spell Casting: your basic attack is a kind of energy shot that you can charge up, but if you go to the pause menu you get a bunch of additional spells you can choose from, which do cool things like clear the screen of enemies, provide you with a magic shield, or allow you to fly. They even incorporate the games password-save feature as a “spell” that gives you a password to continue with.

Lastly, here’s a slightly out of focus shot of me ducking while a bad guy endlessly shoots arrows over my head:

It was pretty cool to get to play through these games a bit. I also hauled out some of my own old, old games, and it’s interesting to have your muscle memory for a game you last played 20 years ago come back without a hitch.

I’m going to be writing more posts in this series, possibly doing some more on the Sega Master System (since I have such great affection for it), and then moving on down the line, hitting up the Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and whatever else I can get my hands on in the Games Archive.

I’m not sure what form all of this will take, but for this blog, what I’d really like, is to hear from classic gaming fans who might be reading this—what games are people interested in seeing? I can’t make any promises, but if there’s something you’d like to see, or haven’t seen in years, post a comment below and let me know! It would be easy to just do all my own favorites, but this is about shared nostalgia, so I would love to hear from Sega fans out there. Anything by Sega is fair game, although we will be doing this chronologically, so if there’s Master System era stuff you’re especially interested in, let me know!